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()Asked if anything could change, Ludeman says there will be no surprises, but he also hedges his bets, adding he “never says never” to anything.

There will also be no shortage of attention for the group as it grapples with the key cross-Channel rail link, part of the integrated Kent franchise that it won through its Govia subsidiary with French partner Keolis.

That gives it access to the speediest new commuter lines in Britain, and from December 2009 it promises a “super-fast, no-distractions service” between Kent, Docklands and central London. Its optimistic projections for take-up underpinned its franchise bid, but if commuter demand — paying a premium for a 36-minute trip from Ashford to London St Pancras — fails to materialise, Ludeman could be in trouble.

And he will have nobody else to blame. The rail division had lost its Thameslink and Thames trains contracts. Despite his success with Southern, Ludeman must have felt Kent was make or break.

He shakes his head. “I was reminded many times by the press that my job was on the line,” he says. “But frankly, Go-Ahead is not that kind of place, and I didn’t feel threatened for a moment.”

Anyway, he says, rail in general is on the up, with more investment and less bickering. At Southeastern — he is keeping the name because changing it “would just be a costly ego-trip” — he promises increased services, better ticketing, and refurbished stations.

As for those who are sceptical about demand for the new, high-speed Kent line — especially as it ends nearer north London than the City — he says Go-Ahead’s optimism is based on sensible projections.

“We looked at land use, employment, population,” he says. “All the data say it will expand significantly. And remember, we won the franchise by a very narrow bid margin.” Hence others, he argues, were backing the same kind of projections.

Really? By now Ludeman is crossing his arms defensively. Yeah, Okay, he admits glumly, the only thing you can guarantee with revenue projections is that they are nearly always wrong.

But Ludeman doesn’t do glum for long. Even rivals acknowledge that his bullish drive is much needed in a sector where decisive action is rare.

“You have to have a bit of ego to get things done,” says Arriva’s group managing director Steve Clayton, who worked with Ludeman in the 1990s. “Rail people tend to be too intellectually driven. Managers from the bus business are more can-do.”

For Ludeman, that can-do attitude has propelled a career that followed a childhood obsession with transport. His family’s roots are in Hamburg — three generations back — but he was brought up in Bromley, south London, the eldest son of a Shell executive and a mother who ran a Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Ludeman read geography at Newcastle University before completing a master’s degree in transport engineering at Salford. In between he took a bus conductor’ s job (he still has his badge AA52142 on his desk) and was bitten by the bus-business bug.