Aberdeen-headquartered FirstGroup is growing a portfolio of independent services to be run outside of the UK Government’s renationalised Great British Railways.
FirstGroup has announced it has acquired another so-called “open access” operation to run trains between London and south and west Wales and hatched plans for other non state-owned services out of London Paddington to Devon and the West Country.
Open access operators are those train services which run outside of the network overseen by the Department for Transport, where private train companies with no taxpayer support take all the financing risk and keep all of the potential profits.
FirstGroup has been a prime mover in the open access movement, the Times reports, originally acquiring the Hull Trains operation with services ignored by the national timetable between London and Humberside; and then more recently launching Lumo, a budget rail service between London and Edinburgh utilising spare capacity on the east coast main line.
The success of Lumo has prompted FirstGroup to apply to extend the Edinburgh service to Glasgow and to launch another Lumo operation between Rochdale north of Manchester and London Euston.
“Growing our open access rail portfolio is a key priority for FirstGroup,” said Graham Sutherland, FirstGroup’s chief executive.
“The introduction of our new Carmarthen to London Paddington service will significantly bolster our footprint and, should our other applications be successful, we will almost treble our current open access capacity over the next few years.”