About Phil
Philip Haigh - Business Editor
Phil joined RAIL magazine as a Junior News & Features Writer in 1997 and apart from a year with Steam Railway magazine, to widen his editorial experience, he has specialised ever since in producing RAIL’s off-diary industry news and expert analysis, for which he is both well-known and nationally-respected. Like Nigel, Phil is a familiar figure in radio and TV studios when national media require expert comment on the rail industry. Both Nigel and Phil are regularly quoted in national newspapers and appear regularly as expert commentators on News 24, Sky News, BBC News, News at Ten, Yiu and Yours, Today, BBC’s Money Programme and dozens of regional TV/radio news programmes.
Phil travels extensively in the UK to keep in touch with the rail industry, so please be patient if you are trying to track him down! His very extensive rail industry knowledge and insight are underpinned and significantly enhanced by his background as a mechanical engineer.
Phil has run RAIL’s second-to-none news desk for the last eight years and deputises widely in Nigel’s absence. He is often based at York, as well as at our Peterborough HQ – although Phil is usually directly contactable by email.
Philip worked as a mechanical engineer after leaving Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, with a degree in mechanical engineering. His engineering time included a spell with Tyne & Wear Metro where he was involved with a project to refurbish the system’s Metrocars in the mid-1990s. Philip was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and grew up in Wylam, a small Northumbrian village with links to several railway pioneers including George Stephenson and William Hedley. He has worked as a volunteer on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, mainly in the locomotive department, but also as editor of the Worth Valley’s’s top quality in-house magazine, Push & Pull - which Phil credits as his opening into railway journalism, from engineering.
