I’m Mark Smith, and I live in an English village in deepest Buckinghamshire, with Dutch wife Nicolette, son Nathaniel, daughter Katelijn, cats Phoenix & Rosie & Pip the dog. Many years ago I ran away from Oxford to join the circus – or as we called it in those days, British Rail.  Starting out in rural Kent on what was then BR’s Southern Region, I was the Station Manager for London’s Charing Cross, London Bridge & Cannon Street stations in the early to mid 1990s.  After a spell as the Customer Relations Manager for two large UK train companies, I worked for the Office of the Rail Regulator and later the Strategic Rail Authority, ending up at the Department for Transport in charge of the team regulating fares & ticketing on the British rail network.  Since 2007 I have run seat 61 full-time, as (a) updating it has indeed become a full-time job and (b) it’s more fun than real work.