John Geoffrey Batley

He was born in Wombwell, Barnsley, moving with his mother and father – a bank employee – and elder sister to Riddlesden near Keighley. He went to Keighley Grammar School, leaving at 17 to join LMS as a trainee civil engineer in Bradford.

He was a member of the Keighley Young Conservatives, as was Cicely Pindar, the couple getting married 1953.

LMS had been nationalised in 1948 to become part of British Railways, and Mr Batley, now a qualified chartered engineer, joined the Eastern Region. In 1962 he became assistant divisional engineer at Leeds, and in 1965 was made management services officer at the BR headquarters in London, he and his family moving to Sevenoaks, Kent.

His next post was as Deputy Principal of the BR Staff College in Woking which he left in 1976 to become divisional manager in Leeds. He moved the family to Ilkley, where he lived until his death.

In 1982 he was made deputy secretary to the British Railways Board in London, becoming secretary in 1984. He retired three years later, now aged 57, and was awarded his OBE in 1987.

A year later he became a railway consultant with the Danish company, Dan Rail, working in Tanzania. He and Cicely spent the next four years living in Dar es Salaam, and on one of his breaks, he climbed Kilimanjaro.

Later he joined the Carl Bro Group as a transport consultant, working in Leeds, and finally retired in the mid-90s.

His family had been head gardeners with Wentworth Castle near Barnsley, for generations and in retirement Mr Batley became heavily involved in the gardens' restoration.

He was a Liveryman with the Worshipful Company of Loriners, and a member of the Savile Club, the Farmers Club and the Honourable Artillery Company.

He is survived by his wife Cicely and their son Richard (their daughter Janet died in 2005), three grandsons and one granddaughter.