His father was Reginald Arthur Shooter, a microbiologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, best known for chairing the enquiry into the 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom.

Having failed his mathematics A-level, he lost his accepted place at the University of Leeds and instead studied mechanical engineering at North Staffordshire Polytechnic.

He worked on expansion projects at Bournemouth and Selhurst, before becoming area manager at St Pancras, then was involved in the establishment of Red Star Parcels and Rail Express Systems, before joining Chiltern Railways in April 1994.

[3][clarification needed] During the privatisation of British Rail he headed up the M40 Trains management buyout consortium that was awarded the Chiltern Railways franchise.

[5] During his time at Chiltern he is credited with the doubling of its passenger numbers through innovation and investment in the ambitious development of train services and infrastructure,[6][7][8][9] and overseeing "the strongest growth record of any rail business in Europe".

[7][19][20] During the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) short demonstration trips with a prototype pure-battery D-Train were organised from Glasgow Central station with Shooter and Henry Posner III of Railroad Development Corporation (RDC) on board.

[21] In 2013 Shooter became chairman of Churnet Valley Railway, and a vice-president of Railfuture along with Andrew Adonis, Chris Green, Roger Ford and Barry Doe.

[27] In the 2010 New Year Honours list, Shooter was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to the rail industry".

[31] On 30 August 2022, a 2.7-metre (9 ft) bronze statue with a bust of Shooter created by Luke Perry and crowdfunded by rail industry leaders and close associates, was unveiled beside platform 1 at Marylebone station in London.

[7][52][53][54][55] In a statement written by him and released by his wife after his death, he described how his symptoms had rapidly worsened, and said that "by the time you read this I shall have gone peacefully to sleep in a clinic in Switzerland".

[51][52][56] By late-December 2022[update] Shooter's memorial service had been planned to be held near Henley-on-Thames on 7 January 2023 at the Fawley Hill Railway museum, created by the late Sir William McAlpine.