The diesel fumes hang acrid in the bright sunshine. They have drifted across from the platforms that serve the East Midlands trains on the notorious BedPan line to become concentrated under the glass roof at St Pancras.

This train shed was originally completed in 1868 by the engineer William Barlow. The fumes, at stark odds with the superbly modernised station, are clearly a personal affront to Rob Holden, the chief executive of London & Continental Railways.

The company owns St Pancras, the high-speed lines that connect it with the Channel Tunnel, the UK arm of the Eurostar train service which uses them and chunks of land north of next door King's Cross and at Stratford in East London.

The refurbishment of St Pancras and the creation of the lines to the Tunnel were a £5.8billion, 11-year infrastructure project that, after some early troubles, came in on time and to budget. One strains to think of another such job completed so successfully. The Emirates Stadium, certainly, but not the Dome, Wembley Stadium, the Jubilee Line extension ... the list of botched huge construction works is a depressing one.

Mr Holden came on board when the scheme was started in 1996 as finance director. Initial investors included National Express, Virgin and the merchant bank then known as SBC Warburg.

The intention had been to float on the stock market perhaps two years later and use this as the basis to fund the project.

That plan was derailed when it became obvious that the estimated revenues from Eurostar were far lower than had been hoped. Much of this was down to the arrival of low-cost airlines such as easyJet.

The project had been championed by Michael Heseltine and LCR came about after the privatisation of British Rail. In 1998 it got a new champion, John Prescott.

Apart from both serving as MPs, this is probably the only thing the two men have in common. The necessary funds were found by the Government, and the project was split in two.

The first job was to upgrade the lines from the Tunnel to take full use of the 186mph trains used by Eurostar. These would take the trains into Waterloo.

The second, more expensive and difficult phase, costing £3.9 billion, would then be the necessary tunnelling and lines up from Ebbsfleet, north Kent, into St Pancras instead.

This duly opened on November 14 last year, according to the timetable that had been set ten years before.

The first “passengers” - daft health and safety rules mean they cannot be described as such - had been carried on the new route last summer.

They were the Olympic evaluation team, back for a second visit to confirm that the capital's transport links were adequate for the Games. In an earlier visit two years before they had been driven through the new tunnels in a fleet of Land Rovers.

“We're responsible for the Olympics in London,” says Mr Holden, with perhaps understandable hyperbole. Will everything be ready for 2012? And will the transport be up to the task? “

We will get it done on time - the issue will be the cost,” he says. “The problem will be if people want to use their cars. The great British public are loath to abandon their motor cars. That will be a big issue.”

He speaks, of course, as a railway man. It is hard not to detect the pride Mr Holden and his team have for what they have achieved. But LCR is now in the end game.

The plan is to sell the infrastructure, the lines and stations, with Eurotunnel seen as a possible buyer. The property assets are being redeveloped with various partners.

The coming of the Olympics means some changes at Stratford, to accommodate the Olympic village for athletes that will then be refurbished for private buyers.

The property assets could also be divested, but for the unfortunate downturn in the market.

LCR is committed to sticking with this for some years to come. Eurostar UK, which has a cumbersome, multinational structure, needs reorganising. But Mr Holden concedes: “What I came here to do, and what I enjoyed doing, is at an end.”

He has been linked to the chairmanship of Network Rail, replacing Sir Ian McAllister, who has been there five years. He is too tactful to comment, but the name of the headhunter involved comes easily enough to his mind.

Mr Holden is just one of 100 board members of Network Rail and is one of those who have put forward a resolution at the forthcoming annual meeting to find an alternative to this unwieldy corporate governance structure.

“While Network Rail has in many ways been successful, it now needs to move on. Those 100-odd members have not been as successful in holding the Network Rail board to account as the public and, dare I say it, the Government would like,” he says diplomatically.

But he also reels off a range of other infrastructure projects that might take his interest. The new Navy carrier programme, the renewal of Trident, Crossrail, nuclear decommissioning ... “I come from defence. There's a lot going on in defence.”

An unassuming Mancunian with a dry sense of humour, Mr Holden was indeed in defence, and on the original Trident programme. But his first job was helping out his father, who worked for an undertaker, in school holidays.

“I was unfazed by dead bodies.” Still, this was never going to be a career option. “I always wanted to be an accountant - a bit boring, I know.”

He was taken on by Arthur Young in his native Manchester and found himself working on the audit of the British Shipbuilders Corporation yard in Barrow-in-Furness, on the North West coast. “In 1983 I went up on a staff loan of four to six weeks and stayed thirteen and a half years.”

This time covered the privatisation by management buyout of the Barrow yard and the Cammell Laird yard on the Wirral, which became the publicly quoted VSEL, the initials standing for Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd. This was bought in 1994 by Lord Weinstock's GEC, then in its prime but heading for disaster some years later under Lord Simpson of Dunkeld and finance director John Mayo. “The day I left GEC was the day George Simpson started,” he winces. This was in 1996, to join LCR.

Mr Holden says the refinancing two years later, and the decision to split the project in two, was probably a blessing in disguise. “I think we would have added to the long list of failed mega-projects in this country.

Building the railways in two sections helped us enormously. We did the easy stage first, and learnt from it. I don't think we've got the skills sets in sufficient quantities in this country to deliver the project in one go.”

He ascribes the project's success to having put down a good set of specifications at the start. What can bedevil such work are changes of plan en route, which increase costs and lead to disputes with contractors over who should bear these - as anyone who has had a new kitchen fitted will attest.

LCR also eschewed the normal “lump sum” contracting for a more flexible approach whereby contractors were incentivised to keep within costs. This meant a more harmonious, team-led process rather than the continual wrangling that can mar other big infrastructure works. “People don't believe it, but that's what actually happened. They built up trust,” he says.

“Nobody came into work thinking they were going to be exploited or taken advantage of. Maybe some organisations didn't make as much money as they would have from a more traditional approach.”

CV

1956: Born April 6 in Crumpsall, Manchester

1977: Joins Arthur Young

1983: Seconded to Barrow-in-Furness shipyard

1986: VSEL created by management buyout

1994: VSEL bought by GEC, becomes finance director, GEC Marine

1996: Finance director, London & Continental Railways (LCR)

1999: Chief executive, LCR

2004: Chairman, LCR, in addition; roles split in 2006.

Married, two children

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