THE man influential in saving East Lancashire's only express train service from the axe has been awarded a CBE.

Richard Bowker, former chairman and chief executive of the Strategic Rail Authority, received the gong for services to the rail industry.

Earlier this year Mr Bowker saved the vital Blackpool-Scarborough service, which stops at Blackburn, Accrington and Burnley, when it looked certain to face the chop.

However the SRA, set up four years ago to control funds and franchises within the rail industry, is to be scrapped and power handed back to the Government.

The former commercial director of Virgin Group and co-chairman of Virgin Rail has spent all his working life in the financial wings of the rail industry.

A former pupil of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, Mr Bowker began his transport career in 1989 as a graduate trainee on the London Underground after completing a degree in economics at Leicester University.

He went on to launch a new leasing scheme for trains on the underground before his talents were spotted by Virgin's Sir Richard Branson in 1997. He was then appointed to chairman of the SRA in 2001.

More recently he was on the shortlist of candidates to take over the Football Association, but was pipped to the high-profile post by former head of ITV Sport, Brian Barwick.

Mr Bowker, who married in 2002, is a Blackburn Rovers fan and enjoys canal boating and playing the piano in his spare time.