Orginal 90's Franchise Awards and Bidders - what could have been...

ScottGallagher · 22 Jun 2019

Hi all my first thread here.

Is any information out there on who the losing bidders were that were shortlisted for the franchises but who lost out and what they proposed (perhaps covered in the Rail press at the time).
The railway could really have looked a lot different visually and operationally perhaps with Virgin instead of GNER or say Connex (shudder) running Midland Mainline etc (if they even bid)

There is the odd tiny bit of info out there but its minimal.

Many Thanks

RailUK Forums

3141 · 22 Jun 2019

The bidders for Chiltern were M40 Trains, CGEA and Stagecoach. I've got this from a cutting from Modern Railways August 1996, which I've recently come across. CGEA was Compagnie Generale des Enterprises Automobiles

which I'm 99% certain became Connex. (I've also seen it called Compagnie Generale des Eaux. Possibly one was a subsidiary of the other.)

Putting CGEA into Google I find that the other bidders for South Eastern were Stagecoach and a joint bid from First (FirstBus as it was then) and the management.

The Modern Railways report says that M40 trains offered a much higher premium than the other two, who seem to have been much less ambitious than the management team behind the winner, and didn't plan expansion on the scale that M40 Trains proposed.

If you put the names of the original franchises into Google you'll probably find some useful links. In this one
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP96-85/RP96-85.pdf from page 29 onwards you'll get quite a lot of info. The most difficult thing will be finding out what the losers were proposing.

ChiefPlanner · 22 Jun 2019

In 1996 , I was working for North London Railways - one of the last to be franchised (March 2nd 1997) , the final 3 bidders were National Express , Connex and Great Western Holdings.

There had been an internal bid , rejected, with a tie up between Metroline (North London bus operator) and the incumbent management team. At the time I thought that was a good combination for "integration" in the North London area.

We had no idea what the "bids" were , kept very confidential and rightly so.

syorksdeano · 22 Jun 2019

Not quite sure on the Northern franchise because the first holders Arriva Trains Northern (Later rebranded as Northern Spirit) had shortage of drivers and rolling stock.

Fast forward all these years and a change of franchise owners back to Arriva has the same problems (well shortage of rolling stock anyway)

leightonbd · 22 Jun 2019

Compangnie Generale des Eaux was a really interesting business, now Vivendi. As the name may suggest, origins in utilities services. I met them when they had a lot of interest in UK cable TV, in the mid 1990s; their General Cable is now, I think, part of Virgin Media.

At some of the meetings a chap called George Muir turned up, very clever and with interest going beyond cables in the ground; shortly after, CGE started going after railway franchises.

The link won’t answer the OP’s question but may be interesting in a more general way:

https://www.standard.co.uk/business...king-down-the-real-rail-culprits-8203849.html

ChiefPlanner · 22 Jun 2019

leightonbd said:
Compangnie Generale des Eaux was a really interesting business, now Vivendi. As the name may suggest, origins in utilities services. I met them when they had a lot of interest in UK cable TV, in the mid 1990s; their General Cable is now, I think, part of Virgin Media.

At some of the meetings a chap called George Muir turned up, very clever and with interest going beyond cables in the ground; shortly after, CGE started going after railway franchises.

The link won’t answer the OP’s question but may be interesting in a more general way:

https://www.standard.co.uk/business...king-down-the-real-rail-culprits-8203849.html

George Muir was the first "external" MD of South Eastern (Connex) and became a very able Director General of ATOC. Worked for him and have huge respect for his intellect and knowledge. Now retired of course.

Unfortunately , the first lot of let franchises were on relatively good terms , which then descended into a series of ever more "challenging" bids , this is well documented in back copies of Modern Railways and Rail etc , - to go back to SE , - turnaround in subsidy and growth was expected , which was , to say the very least , challenging. Much worse for other companies , where the only way it seemed was to slash costs , with predicatable results.

3141 · 22 Jun 2019

syorksdeano said:
Not quite sure on the Northern franchise because the first holders Arriva Trains Northern (Later rebranded as Northern Spirit) had shortage of drivers and rolling stock.

Fast forward all these years and a change of franchise owners back to Arriva has the same problems (well shortage of rolling stock anyway)

My recollection is that in the first round of franchising Great Western Holdings won Regional Railways NW, and were later bought out by First. RR NE was won by MTL, who had also won Merseyside Electrics. It was MTL who called the franchise Northern Spirit. They later decided to sell their two franchises, which were bought by Arriva, who renamed Northern Spirit Arriva Trains North. Then the Strategic Rail Authority decided to split the two areas of Northern rail into Transpennine Express, which was won by a joint bid from First and Keolis, and the rest, which was won by Serco and Nedrail (now renamed Abellio, which they imagined sounded better).

alangla · 22 Jun 2019

Did they MTL not end up in administration, ending in the entire company being bought by Arriva?

pdeaves · 22 Jun 2019

3141 said:
My recollection is that in the first round of franchising Great Western Holdings won Regional Railways NW, and were later bought out by First. RR NE was won by MTL, who had also won Merseyside Electrics. It was MTL who called the franchise Northern Spirit. They later decided to sell their two franchises, which were bought by Arriva, who renamed Northern Spirit Arriva Trains North. Then the Strategic Rail Authority decided to split the two areas of Northern rail into Transpennine Express, which was won by a joint bid from First and Keolis, and the rest, which was won by Serco and Nedrail (now renamed Abellio, which they imagined sounded better).

For 'what happened' franchise details (rather than the 'also rans' that the original post wanted), have a look at http://www.railwaycodes.org.uk/operators/franchises1.shtm. The LTS franchise should have gone to Enterprise Rail but irregularities in Travelcard fare allocation meant that was cancelled.

ScottGallagher · 23 Jun 2019

ChiefPlanner said:
In 1996 , I was working for North London Railways - one of the last to be franchised (March 2nd 1997) , the final 3 bidders were National Express , Connex and Great Western Holdings.

There had been an internal bid , rejected, with a tie up between Metroline (North London bus operator) and the incumbent management team. At the time I thought that was a good combination for "integration" in the North London area.

We had no idea what the "bids" were , kept very confidential and rightly so.

Thanks Chiefplanner thats interesting, of course I get bids were to be confidential, I was more leaning to things like would stock have been replaced had another operator won a franchise that wasnt by the winner, in the case of NLR had connex won (god forbid), could they have replaced the 313 fleet if they chose to or was it mandated that it wasnt required or even if LTS was won by someone else we could have seen a fleet of 333's rather than 357's.

Sad Sprinter · 23 Jun 2019

I’ve put into Companies House before the names of defunct train operating companies such as Connex South Central, and it has thrown up the names of unused companies from other bidders for that franchise. I’ve found things like: Arrivia Great Eastern, First South Central etc.

ChiefPlanner · 23 Jun 2019

ScottGallagher said:
Thanks Chiefplanner thats interesting, of course I get bids were to be confidential, I was more leaning to things like would stock have been replaced had another operator won a franchise that wasnt by the winner, in the case of NLR had connex won (god forbid), could they have replaced the 313 fleet if they chose to or was it mandated that it wasnt required or even if LTS was won by someone else we could have seen a fleet of 333's rather than 357's.

The bidding process at the time was all about lowest subsidy and covering (as a minimum) the then Passenger Service requirement , with an open field on "enhancements" that we deemed economic or generative. This successful NX bid for NLR had a planned Watford to Gatwick service (in competition with Connex SC - which yearned for a Brighton - Rugby service using 319's- which was partly delivered , not without issues !) - the GTW service was binned as there was no stock available (bar an idea of using 165/0 at a stupid price from Thames Trains !) , and the tightly pressed 313 fleet was out of gauge south of Clapham and their 75 mph max speed was of no benefit as there were no (Connex blocked) paths available on the slow lines !!.

There were firm commitments on a "new" diesel fleet to replace the diabolical 121 / 117 fleet , which was eventually done using ex Central 150's , after a moment of madness where 141's were considered for a microsecond. There was no major electric fleet change - the 321's had been like for like C6X'D and came back in base NSE livery before the transfer , and the 313's had no obvious replacement but were also due for C6X , but I did get them properly deep cleaned with a few (cheap) interior mods. The few service mods were 20 min all day on the DC and extra Euston - Northampton _ New Street trains. Very easy.

Studies were promised on MK - Aylesbury (done - with about a 50% load on a 153 !) , as this was binned , the remedy was to "market" bus links between the two places.

We all agreed at the time , that NOT having "Connex North London" was a salvation from bad times , - but I often wondered what GW Holdings might have suggested. All filed away somewhere in the archives and no doubt embargoed.

3141 · 23 Jun 2019

alangla said:
Did they MTL not end up in administration, ending in the entire company being bought by Arriva?

I recall it being reported that MTL wanted to sell their rail franchises, and my recollection is that Arriva bought them because it wanted to get into the rail business, having missed out because it was the last of the big bus groups to be formed and hadn't been on the scene at the time most franchises were being let. You may be right that MTL later went into administration.

ScottGallagher · 23 Jun 2019

ChiefPlanner said:
George Muir was the first "external" MD of South Eastern (Connex) and became a very able Director General of ATOC. Worked for him and have huge respect for his intellect and knowledge. Now retired of course.

Unfortunately , the first lot of let franchises were on relatively good terms , which then descended into a series of ever more "challenging" bids , this is well documented in back copies of Modern Railways and Rail etc , - to go back to SE , - turnaround in subsidy and growth was expected , which was , to say the very least , challenging. Much worse for other companies , where the only way it seemed was to slash costs , with predicatable results.

WhenI used to buy MR and Rail i remember in particular the Wales franchises being heavily cutback by Prism and them losing money head over fist , who themselves sold to NX in 2000.

ScottGallagher · 23 Jun 2019

ChiefPlanner said:
The bidding process at the time was all about lowest subsidy and covering (as a minimum) the then Passenger Service requirement , with an open field on "enhancements" that we deemed economic or generative. This successful NX bid for NLR had a planned Watford to Gatwick service (in competition with Connex SC - which yearned for a Brighton - Rugby service using 319's- which was partly delivered , not without issues !) - the GTW service was binned as there was no stock available (bar an idea of using 165/0 at a stupid price from Thames Trains !) , and the tightly pressed 313 fleet was out of gauge south of Clapham and their 75 mph max speed was of no benefit as there were no (Connex blocked) paths available on the slow lines !!.

There were firm commitments on a "new" diesel fleet to replace the diabolical 121 / 117 fleet , which was eventually done using ex Central 150's , after a moment of madness where 141's were considered for a microsecond. There was no major electric fleet change - the 321's had been like for like C6X'D and came back in base NSE livery before the transfer , and the 313's had no obvious replacement but were also due for C6X , but I did get them properly deep cleaned with a few (cheap) interior mods. The few service mods were 20 min all day on the DC and extra Euston - Northampton _ New Street trains. Very easy.

Studies were promised on MK - Aylesbury (done - with about a 50% load on a 153 !) , as this was binned , the remedy was to "market" bus links between the two places.

We all agreed at the time , that NOT having "Connex North London" was a salvation from bad times , - but I often wondered what GW Holdings might have suggested. All filed away somewhere in the archives and no doubt embargoed.

Very interesting thanks a lot!

Helvellyn · 23 Jun 2019

Not in the first lot of franchises but the Stagecoach 20-year franchise for SWT that got binned in the early 2000s would have been interesting. Things that were known about included a new Clapham Junction station slightly further North, so not on curved track. The SRA also "stole" 120 Desiro vehicles (that became Class 350/1) that prevented Stagecoach delivering a ten-car railway on the Windsor lines over a decade earlier than eventually happened. I wish Labour had stuck with these long franchises offering an incentive to invest before Gordon Brown's Treasury got involved to turn many into cash cows that encouraged over ambitious bids that stifled in many cases innovation.

danielnez1 · 23 Jun 2019

3141 said:
I recall it being reported that MTL wanted to sell their rail franchises, and my recollection is that Arriva bought them because it wanted to get into the rail business, having missed out because it was the last of the big bus groups to be formed and hadn't been on the scene at the time most franchises were being let. You may be right that MTL later went into administration.

AFIK MTL never did go into administration; it was on the brink though before Arriva purchased the entire group. Back when the Northern Railways Forum, I recall a posting from an apparent ex Northern Spirit/ATN employee that the finical situation at MTL was so dire at the end that the management form Liverpool were often dispatched to empty ticket machines from their managed stations in order to temporally shore up the groups various bank accounts.

LNW-GW Joint · 1 Jul 2019

syorksdeano said:
Not quite sure on the Northern franchise because the first holders Arriva Trains Northern (Later rebranded as Northern Spirit) had shortage of drivers and rolling stock.
Fast forward all these years and a change of franchise owners back to Arriva has the same problems (well shortage of rolling stock anyway)

There wasn't a Northern originally, or a TPE.
BR left us RR (Regional Railways) North West and RR North East, operating local services roughly either side of the Pennines (but RRNE reached Liverpool!).
RRNW went to North Western Trains, which was an arm of Great Western Holdings - eventually folded into First Group like FGW.
RRNE went to MTL (who also got Merseyrail), and was branded Northern Spirit, but within 2 years MTL sold out both franchises to Arriva to avoid collapse (they were in a bad way).
In 2000 the SRA reorganised a number of franchise boundaries, resulting in today's Northern and TPE (with NWT's Welsh routes going to Wales & Borders).
In the musical chairs of the subsequent competitions in 2003, Arriva lost Merseyrail and Northern Spirit, but gained Wales & Borders.
First lost NWT but gained TPE.
Serco/Abellio won Merseyrail (which they still have as it is a 25-year contract) and Northern.
Arriva won Northern when retendered in 2015, and First retained TPE.
This is a simplified version - there were other minority players from time to time, including Keolis at TPE and various management buyouts.

danielnez1 · 9 Jul 2019

Just to clarify, MTL was purchased outright by Arriva (rather than MTL transferring their franchises). Link to Arriva history page.

Bald Rick · 9 Jul 2019

Inter City West Coast was down to three:

Stagecoach
Sea Containers
Virgin

From what I can remember from the distance of 2 decades plus, the Stagecoach bid was cheap and cheerful: plain vanilla new EMUs with a pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap philosophy. Sea Containers went for something a bit like GNER (not sure what their rolling stock plan was) and were quite conservative, and we all know what the Virgin bid resulted in.

pdeaves · 10 Jul 2019

Bald Rick said:
Inter City West Coast was down to three:

Stagecoach
Sea Containers
Virgin

From what I can remember from the distance of 2 decades plus, the Stagecoach bid was cheap and cheerful: plain vanilla new EMUs with a pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap philosophy. Sea Containers went for something a bit like GNER (not sure what their rolling stock plan was) and were quite conservative, and we all know what the Virgin bid resulted in.

and, for those unaware, Virgin Trains at the time of the franchise win did not have any Stagecoach involvement. Stagecoach joined Virgin later, initially something like a 20% holding, then increasing to the 49% we know today.

Orginal 90's Franchise Awards and Bidders - what could have been...

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