What Happened to Wrexham & Shropshire?

[whhistle]

Someone said that the other train companies denied them (W&S) access to stations, therefore they (W&S) could only operate between Wrexham and London.

I thought the other train companies couldn't do that under access rules?

 

[swt_passenger]

Someone was not quite accurate, although there was something in that. At the time they started there was a rule called 'moderation of competition' (MoC) that prevented them from calling at key WCML stations and taking revenue from the WCML franchisee, but this was a known limitation specific to the WCML franchise only and it applied to other mainstream TOCs as well - at that time. MoC prevented Chiltern running via Coventry into New St for instance, and there were disputes about Chilterns rights during engineering diversions; and Southern's calling patterns at WCML stations on their WLL to Milton Keynes route were also disputed due to the same restrictions.

MoC was part of one of the original franchise agreements between DfT and Virgin West Coast (VWC), but the rule was withdrawn subsequently, and would not have applied to WSMR only a few months after they were shut down. But that rule didn't prevent them calling at stations on their line of route that were not considered to abstract revenue from VWC; so they weren't limited to Wrexham and Marylebone only, if that was what was implied.

Personally I think the new owners came to the conclusion that the route wouldn't survive even after moderation of competition lapsed - in any case they appear to have decided the stock was more use to them on the main Chiltern route...

 

[ChiefPlanner]

In a nutshell - a flawed business case - (but a great service model) - hard to market a 4 hour journey time - versus a change at Wolves or Crewe.

 

[aylesbury]

At least it has given us Chiltern Mainline a service that is growing and could provide a model for other franchises.When the 68,s start as motive power there will be reliability and then maybe in the future new coaches and longer trains offering an alternative to the WCML for Birmingham.

 

[thenorthern]

As soon as they launched as well Virgin Trains introduced a Wrexham to London via Chester train which took 2 1/2 hours compared to Wrexham and Shropshire's 4.

Wrexham and Shropshire was never going to work, with Hull Trains and Grand Central prior to them operating Hull and Bradford were served by the daily Hull Executive and Bradford Belle respectively and Sunderland was served by no London trains at all. As these are 3 big cities and GNER wasn't going to introduce more there was a business case there. Wrexham and Shrewsbury on the other hand aren't that big and Telford had good links to Wolverhampton for connecting trains so there was little chance in Wrexham and Shropshire working.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In a nutshell - a flawed business case - (but a great service model) - hard to market a 4 hour journey time - versus a change at Wolves or Crewe.

That, and DB wanting the locos and Mk3s for Chiltern.

Neil

 

[Essexman]

Closed for a number of reasons -

Journey slow (although faster than when launched and would have further decreased), mainly due to very slow passage around Birmingham.
Non competition agreement wouldn't allow WSMR to compete with existing operators so couldn't carry passengers between Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry & London, plus before they were owned by same company as Chiltern, couldn't serve Banbury.
Recession reduced the amount of rail travel just as WSMR were growing, hence they had to reduce timetable.
I my view some fares were too cheap.
Owners found another more profitable use for the trains.

 

[TDK]

Most of this is correct however the main reason in my opinion is Neils with the stock being required by Chiltern for the upgraded Evergreen 3 project with Chiltern needing more stock to run the up and coming Oxford service - the closure was solely political. The demise and running down of the company was because of:

1. Moderation of competition with the original plan not taking this into account so WSMR having to serve Birmingham via Thame Bridge Parkway and not Wolverhampton or New Street as originally planned, so bad initial planning.

2. The journey time

3. The delay in the refurbished stock.

4. Very poor marketing where you have managers trying to market Thame Bridge Parkway and Telford where the majority of the potential clientele were in the Shrewbwbury. Wem. Gobowen, Whitchurch areas etc.

5. The initial cost of setting the company up was higher than expected.

6. No money from central government.

7. The so called recession and the rises in fuel prices.

8. The long engineering works on the Chilterns that increased the journey time to 5 hours due to diversions.

9. DB taking over, WSMR were abstracting money that would have gone to ATW, Chiltern and XC all sister companies.

10. The rapid closure in my opinion was that the stock was required by both ATW and Chiltern and to secure the stock for Chiltern the company had to be closed quickly.

These are all my own opinions and may be incorrect but you can bet most of it is spot on!

DB regio at the time did try their utmost to get employment for the employees
with a high success rate however there were many especially the stewards who found it difficult, all the drivers and most of the guards had continuous employment but there were a few who had relocated and had to relocate again at their own costs.

The idea was great, the service was great but the planning and the MoC was something else!

 

[NSEFAN]

Someone was not quite accurate, although there was something in that. At the time they started there was a rule called 'moderation of competition' (MoC) that prevented them from calling at key WCML stations and taking revenue from the WCML franchisee, but this was a known limitation specific to the WCML franchise only and it applied to other mainstream TOCs as well - at that time. MoC prevented Chiltern running via Coventry into New St for instance, and there were disputes about Chilterns rights during engineering diversions; and Southern's calling patterns at WCML stations on their WLL to Milton Keynes route were also disputed due to the same restrictions.

As I understand it, the moderation of competition rule was to ensure that each franchisee concerned was able to keep up its payments to the DfT. An open-access operator such as Wrexham & Shropshire would put these repayments at risk by abstracting revenue due to ORCATS. Is my understanding correct?

 

[merlodlliw]

Most of this is correct however the main reason in my opinion is Neils with the stock being required by Chiltern for the upgraded Evergreen 3 project with Chiltern needing more stock to run the up and coming Oxford service - the closure was solely political. The demise and running down of the company was because of:

1. Moderation of competition with the original plan not taking this into account so WSMR having to serve Birmingham via Thame Bridge Parkway and not Wolverhampton or New Street as originally planned, so bad initial planning.

2. The journey time

3. The delay in the refurbished stock.

4. Very poor marketing where you have managers trying to market Thame Bridge Parkway and Telford where the majority of the potential clientele were in the Shrewbwbury. Wem. Gobowen, Whitchurch areas etc.

5. The initial cost of setting the company up was higher than expected.

6. No money from central government.

7. The so called recession and the rises in fuel prices.

8. The long engineering works on the Chilterns that increased the journey time to 5 hours due to diversions.

9. DB taking over, WSMR were abstracting money that would have gone to ATW, Chiltern and XC all sister companies.

10. The rapid closure in my opinion was that the stock was required by both ATW and Chiltern and to secure the stock for Chiltern the company had to be closed quickly.

These are all my own opinions and may be incorrect but you can bet most of it is spot on!

DB regio at the time did try their utmost to get employment for the employees
with a high success rate however there were many especially the stewards who found it difficult, all the drivers and most of the guards had continuous employment but there were a few who had relocated and had to relocate again at their own costs.

The idea was great, the service was great but the planning and the MoC was something else!

You are spot on TDK,has you worked for W/S you know more than most.I was in at the very birth of the Company, in item one, moderation of Competition,this only raised its head after VT threw it in,the ORR to their shame had forgotten all about it.
ATW at the time was very anti W/S and got into bed with Vt to spoil it by giving up two of its paths to VT for there Wrexham/London voyager,we still bear the the problems of these paths given up by ATW,previous ATW ran a service departing Wrexham for connections to Manchester ex Chester 0712,this caused many to turn to their cars when the connection was lost,although VT show the Wrexham service in their timetables, for the past six years have never run a public holiday service, which is not shown.
So has a result the largest town in North Wales have two hour gaps on public holidays this also includes Xmas Eve and new years eve.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

As I understand it, the moderation of competition rule was to ensure that each franchisee concerned was able to keep up its payments to the DfT. An open-access operator such as Wrexham & Shropshire would put these repayments at risk by abstracting revenue due to ORCATS. Is my understanding correct?

W/S did get orcats money,but was barred from picking up at Wolverhampton and New Street.

 

[swt_passenger]

As I understand it, the moderation of competition rule was to ensure that each franchisee concerned was able to keep up its payments to the DfT. An open-access operator such as Wrexham & Shropshire would put these repayments at risk by abstracting revenue due to ORCATS. Is my understanding correct?

Yes, but only Virgin West Coast had such a rigorous moderation of competition, that it was effectively a 'blanket ban'.

Although there were legal claims by GNER, Grand Central could call at ECML main stations, as long they were able to prove that they were increasing passenger flows overall. That is known as the 'not primarily abstractive' test. That remains the system for open access operators even today, as long as they don't just syphon off existing passengers from the incumbent franchisee, and if they can get the paths, they can run.

 

[TDK]

Yes, but only Virgin West Coast had such a rigorous moderation of competition, that it was effectively a 'blanket ban'.

Although there were legal claims by GNER, Grand Central could call at ECML main stations, as long they were able to prove that they were increasing passenger flows overall. That is known as the 'not primarily abstractive' test. That remains the system for open access operators even today, as long as they don't just syphon off existing passengers from the incumbent franchisee, and if they can get the paths, they can run.

That is correct however LM, VT, ATW & XC put in documents to the ORR trying to stop WSMR getting off the ground. The problem was there at the outset with the founders of WSMR not being aware of the MoC and building an initial timetable to serve Wolves, New Street, International and Coventry to find out after their application that this would not be permitted.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

That is correct however LM, VT, ATW & XC put in documents to the ORR trying to stop WSMR getting off the ground. The problem was there at the outset with the founders of WSMR not being aware of the MoC and building an initial timetable to serve Wolves, New Street, International and Coventry to find out after their application that this would not be permitted.

Which is very surprising (and unfortunate) - a huge amount of work was done (generally by the TOC's) to draw up the whole complex matrix of MoC - for example Kensington Olympia was barred for open access trains off the WCML corridor.All was binned thankfully - by around 2002 - bar WCML direct stations to protect the "significant" investment in PUG 2 and WCML by Virgin et al (backed by RT and then NR)

A period , best forgotten I think !

 

[thenorthern]

Moderation of Competition meant that London to Crewe trains had to travel via Northampton until it expired in 2012.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

The journey time thing was interesting. The 67s were limited to freight speeds when WSMR were using them, Chiltern had them for about five minutes, some paperwork got filled in and what do you know? They were allowed to do HST speeds.

 

[edwin_m]

As I understand it, the moderation of competition rule was to ensure that each franchisee concerned was able to keep up its payments to the DfT. An open-access operator such as Wrexham & Shropshire would put these repayments at risk by abstracting revenue due to ORCATS. Is my understanding correct?

Yes. Every open access operator has to demonstrate that their service will be "not primarily abstractive", meaning that the money they make will be predominantly from new journeys rather than creaming off existing franchises. The reason for this, which makes some sense, is that the franchise has to pay a premium to or receive a subsidy from Government, so any revenue abstracted by an open access operator is effectively a loss to the taxpayer. The Moderation of Competition rules seem to have been something more onerous which only applied to the Virgin franchise and have now expired.

A related issue is that franchises pay Network Rail a "fixed track access charge", which covers the fixed costs of providing the infrastructure they use, plus the wear and tear cost of each train using it which is the "variable track access charge". Open access operators only pay the variable charge, which suggests that they should only be using "marginal" network capacity that nobody else wants to use. I think I read somewhere that Grand Central has offered to pay some fixed track access charge in return for better access.

 

[Chris Wallis]

Yes. Every open access operator has to demonstrate that their service will be "not primarily abstractive", meaning that the money they make will be predominantly from new journeys rather than creaming off existing franchises. The reason for this, which makes some sense, is that the franchise has to pay a premium to or receive a subsidy from Government, so any revenue abstracted by an open access operator is effectively a loss to the taxpayer. The Moderation of Competition rules seem to have been something more onerous which only applied to the Virgin franchise and have now expired.

But I thought the idea of the 'so called' privatisation of the railways was to increase competition and provide the customer with more options?

I always suspected, with absolutely nothing to support that suspicion, that the W&S was created with the sole intention of being sold to one of TOC's at the soonest possible opportunity.

But perhaps some of the more educated posts in this discussion suggest otherwise.

 

[edwin_m]

But I thought the idea of the 'so called' privatisation of the railways was to increase competition and provide the customer with more options?

You may well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

 

[Dampflok]

If you want the full story, the book is now available and makes very interesting reading:

http://adlestroppress.co.uk/content/7-wrexham-shropshire

The history of the railway, its rise and fall from concept to closure and beyond, is told by many of those involved from the earliest ideas through the life span of the railway to its demise, a sad day for all concerned.

At least we do have the legacy of the Chiltern loco-hauled services!

Cheers, Geoff

 

[Suraggu]

If you want the full story, the book is now available and makes very interesting reading:

http://adlestroppress.co.uk/content/7-wrexham-shropshire

The history of the railway, its rise and fall from concept to closure and beyond, is told by many of those involved from the earliest ideas through the life span of the railway to its demise, a sad day for all concerned.

At least we do have the legacy of the Chiltern loco-hauled services!

Cheers, Geoff

It's true but WSMR lost money hand over fist. I remember travelling on a Sunday in the summer on one of its two trains that day due to engineering work being diverted along the WCML then reversing around the neasden area. The train had 15 fare paying passengers onboard and 5 crew. The journey time was around the 6 hour mark. Things like that did not help matters.
I always saw it as Adrian Shooters private train set. And that money spent on the refurb is now being recouped through use on Chiltern Railways.

It put other TOC's to shame but they was a valid reason for that.

 

[TDK]

If you want the full story, the book is now available and makes very interesting reading:

http://adlestroppress.co.uk/content/7-wrexham-shropshire

The history of the railway, its rise and fall from concept to closure and beyond, is told by many of those involved from the earliest ideas through the life span of the railway to its demise, a sad day for all concerned.

At least we do have the legacy of the Chiltern loco-hauled services!

Cheers, Geoff

It's a crying shame that the producers of the book did not let staff have a free copy but only a discount - shame on them - does to book include the true story in it's entirety?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The journey time thing was interesting. The 67s were limited to freight speeds when WSMR were using them, Chiltern had them for about five minutes, some paperwork got filled in and what do you know? They were allowed to do HST speeds.

That is incorrect as WSMR was not permitted to do the SP/MU/HST speeds they used to get to 100mph quite easily from the outset between Coventry and International, freight are limited to a maximum of 75mph. The worst speed restriction was between Bicester and Princes Risborough at on 60mph but as soon as Chiltern decided they were going to do a Brum to London run the speed way hiked up to firstly 85mph and then 100mph Chiltern had a high interest in competing with VT and also Chiltern's chairman was the Chairman of WSMR it's a shame more work was not spent equally on both the companies.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

If you want the full story, the book is now available and makes very interesting reading:

http://adlestroppress.co.uk/content/7-wrexham-shropshire


At least we do have the legacy of the Chiltern loco-hauled services!

Cheers, Geoff

Great for spotters but it doesn't help the staff who only got 3 days notice

 

[Chris Wallis]

I did wonder if a similar kind of service could work elsewhere around the country.

For instance, a direct service from Kings Lynn, or from Bury St Edmunds & Newmarket, into London in less than 90 minutes.

Also, from Cambridge, where passengers might be prepared to pay a small premium to avoid being crammed into a 317 or 365........or on the busier XC Birmingham NS to Stansted Airport services.

I guess this "not primarily abstractive" nonsense may scupper this approach though!

 

[edwin_m]

I did wonder if a similar kind of service could work elsewhere around the country.

For instance, a direct service from Kings Lynn, or from Bury St Edmunds & Newmarket, into London in less than 90 minutes.

Also, from Cambridge, where passengers might be prepared to pay a small premium to avoid being crammed into a 317 or 365........or on the busier XC Birmingham NS to Stansted Airport services.

I guess this "not primarily abstractive" nonsense may scupper this approach though!

Probably so, also capacity issues on the route and at the London termini. It's likely that these routes are already running as many trains as they are able to, so extra trains for some people would mean pain for others.

Rather than dismissing it as nonsense, how would you ensure value for money for the taxpayer without doing a "not primarily abstractive" test or something very similar to it? One of the many contradictions of our privatised railway, which tries to be a free market but basically isn't.