Two years ago, you would need to have been made of hardy stuff to join First Great Western's management team. Condemned as "abysmal" by one critic, passengers, watchdogs and even the Prime Minister were queuing up to stick the boot into the beleaguered rail company.

Thanks to a toxic combination of overcrowding, poor service and unreliability, the Westcountry's most important rail operator was branded "Worst Late Western" by fed-up rail users. The inevitable Facebook group, spitting vitriol, followed. Its under-performance was so serious that MPs were calling for FGW to be stripped of the £1.1 billion franchise to run services throughout the West of England.

It was against a backdrop of one transport minister suggesting FGW was delivering a level of service "that would not have been acceptable in the darkest days of British Rail" that Mark Hopwood was drafted in.

Appointed in January 2008 as part of a management clear out, the 38-year-old troubleshooter had built a reputation for bringing under-performing rail companies to book. His job was to salvage the company's plummeting reputation — no small task given the size of FGW. It engulfs high speed inter-city services linking South Wales, the Cotswolds and the South West with London, commuter and rural branch line services and even a sleeper from Penzance.

But just over two years later, even the firm's harshest critics would recognise a change for the better.

Latest figures show that punctuality is at its best level in 13 years, with 92.4 per cent of trains arriving on time. By contrast, at its nadir, one in five FGW trains were either cancelled or delayed, a bottom-of-the-table performance it had an unhappy knack of repeating.

Mr Hopwood is a straight-talking former British Rail man, honest about the company's failings but also keen to point out where the industry gets it right. An "enormous amount of myth" surrounds the disruption caused by storms on the Dawlish coastal line. Those who view rail nationalisation as more superior to the privatised network have a "tendency to look back with rose-tinted spectacles". Of FGW, he admits punctuality was "nowhere near as good as it should have been, nowhere near as good as other train operators". Critics were "quite right to be upset".

Elevated to managing director half-way through the re-building job, Mr Hopwood makes no attempt to re-write history by suggesting the service was anything other than woeful. "There was a very clear message coming to the business... they were looking for an improvement and a fairly rapid improvement," he says during an interview in the eaves of the Brunel-designed Exeter St David's station.

"Sir Moir Lockhead (chief executive of parent company FirstGroup) and the board at First Group responded quickly to that and put a new management team in place. We were given some fairly stiff targets in terms of trying to deliver improvement — the good news is we delivered on those and perhaps delivered on it slightly more quickly than people expected."

There is an element of back to basics about the turnaround. Getting the right number of drivers and guards. Improving the reliability of the rolling stock. Mr Hopwood also credits a good relationship with Network Rail, which maintains the track and other infrastructure, in executing the timetable more efficiently.

Complaints persist, of course. Leading transport commentator Christian Wolmar says its inter-city carriages were "designed with all the sensitivity and consideration for passenger comfort of Ryanair", and overcrowding remains a bugbear for many.

But the firm says it is listening, launching this year an early morning London to Westcountry service at the behest of business leaders and even setting up a training programme that involved actors behaving badly to drive up customer service.

All of which was building towards eradicating late trains and cancellations, the foundation on which the recovery was based.

"You can talk about all sorts of exciting things but at the end of the day if you're not running the trains and running them to something like on time, most of the time, we are going to have a serious problem. Not surprisingly, as punctuality has improved, customer satisfaction has improved too."

Mr Hopwood is quick to rein in any hubris, however. He knows FGW is caught in a Catch 22 situation. Improved services attract more passengers, which in turn puts greater strain on trains already fit to burst. Commuters left standing on platforms going to and from Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth will be acutely aware of the problem.

One rail campaigner, acknowledging improvements, told the Western Morning News: "Overcrowding of local services is still the big challenge with which FGW needs to get to grips."

Passenger growth has slowed almost to a halt, meaning train companies are struggling to turn a profit. Indeed, FGW received £50 million in Government subsidy last year as revenues tumbled. But growth was strong pre-credit crunch. Since 1998, the number of journeys on the Great Western line grew annually by 4 per cent to around 74 million in 2007.

The growth on local journeys in particular requires, to use transport industry speak, more capacity. In other words, more trains and carriages. Mr Hopwood concedes that every time it adds a carriage to trains around the Westcountry's economic centres they fill up "very, very quickly".

Trouble is most of the passenger growth has happened during the morning and late afternoon rush hours, meaning extra trains would stand idle for much of the rest of the day. "Unfortunately the rolling stock required is needed for one or two journeys in the morning peak, one or two journeys in the evening peak," Mr Hopwood said. "Commercially it makes it more difficult to justify."

Adding more rolling stock is far from straight-forward. With the Department of Transport ordering a comprehensive review of rolling stock orders, many of the extra trains FGW hoped for look unlikely to arrive. The first direct consequence is that 12 carriages earmarked for the west of England have been put on hold.

This followed the cancellation of an order for diesel trains and a review of the order for new inter-city trains, both initiated by the Labour government and both destined to mean an expansion of the fleet.

He said: "You have to recognise to some extent that's a reflection of the success of the industry. While nobody likes overcrowding, the fact that people believe rail is the best way to get in and out of these centres to a far greater extent than they would in the past is a success."

Mr Hopwood is philosophical, coming close to acknowledging that cuts to rail spending are inevitable. "Of course, I would like to think that some of the projects with a good business case behind them will carry on regardless, but it would be rather peculiar in the current financial climate if we didn't have that scrutiny."

When pressed on whether he thinks the chances of getting a big number of trains to come West, he said: "In terms of the larger scale projects we are looking at — things like new trains and substantial vehicle cascades by large numbers of new trains in the rest of the country — I think there is a question mark over that. And while that's disappointing, I think we understand the reasons for that."

So how to square the circle? Combat overcrowding with little hope of any new trains? FGW will receive 30 carriages on long-term loan to replace the same number about to be returned to the companies they were borrowed from, but that will only prevent the fleet from shrinking.

Mr Hopwood talks about working "creatively" and negotiating "modest amounts of additional capacity", adding carriages here and there.

He also thinks FGW has to "sweat our resources as much as we can" and he is urging MPs and councillors to lobby Government. He said: "We also have to recognise in terms of funding there isn't much appetite for increase in rail fares and there isn't much likelihood the Government is going to find large quantities of public funding to release in the current climate. So we have to recognise this is quite a difficult time."

Some commentators have suggested that FGW might have to patch up its 117-strong fleet of high speed inter-city trains to see them through the years of austerity. A £7.5 billion contract to replace Britain's ageing inter-city train fleet was postponed by the Labour government in February, which could have seen FGW in receipt of modern Hitachi rolling stock.

In place of acquiring new trains, some think FGW is faced with giving a thorough life-extension to trains bought by British Rail in the 1970s and 1980s for another two decades.

While speeding through the rural Westcountry in a 54-year-old train hardly seems like a thrilling prospect, Mr Hopwood is quick to allay fears the fleet might be getting long in the tooth. The fleet has already been substantially rebuilt, fitted with German, fuel-efficient engines and refurbished throughout, and it can do it again. FGW is looking to install modern toilets and get rid of the slam doors, Mr Hopwood said.

"Yes, we can do that work and the trains can carry on. The Mk3 carriage is one of the most popular carriages with customers. Provided we can keep them in a good position, keep them clean and presentable, I don't think most of our customers would have a problem with them carrying on."

A perpetual complaint about FGW are the fares. Last year, rail expert Barry Doe argued prices since privatisation shot up by many times the rate of inflation, including "capped" inter-city fares. In 1995, the cheapest "walk-on" return from London to Plymouth was £39, but it was £72 last year (and even higher now). This is a rise of 85 per cent compared with inflation of 45 per cent over the same period.

It is a subject on which Mr Hopwood is clearly well-rehearsed. There are cheap tickets around, and not just when buying advanced tickets or at off-peak. From Plymouth to Exeter it was £12.70 at peak in 2006 — now it is £7.50. "We've done that because we do have capacity available on those services." Fares are on average cheaper per mile than a couple of years ago, the firm says.

The trade off is that travelling whenever you want, including peak, is appreciably more expensive. It is £229 for a Plymouth-London return.

Mr Hopwood insists more people are buying advanced tickets and off-peak, and draws parallels with low-cost airline model. "Like most businesses we don't offer the best deals when our product is fully utilised and trains are full. That's the same as hotels and restaurants — restaurants won't be offering their two-for-one deals on a Friday night, because they can fill the restaurant anyway. We're no different."

There is competition, Mr Hopwood points out, from airlines, National Express and the car. The failure of Air Southwest's Plymouth to London City service, which looked to "generate some trade from distressed rail customers", is a good sign, he says. "Our trains are generally running quite full. In an environment where there is quite a lot of competition I think we've got it (fares) about right."

High speed rail, trains travelling at 250mph mooted for the north of England, are unlikely to be heading to the sparsely populated West any time soon. But Mr Hopwood urges the region to start thinking about the UK's third high speed line (High Speed 3) along the Great Western corridor.

"We have to recognise that that sort of project is not affordable at the moment, but certainly I think we should be making sure people understand that the opportunity exists in the future."

So are they Worst Late Western no more? "Yes, clearly there are some memories. But we spend a lot of time talking to stakeholders, customers, user groups and almost without exception they will say the services are better."