Network
rail@bauermedia.co.uk
THE Office of Rail and Road has given the go-ahead for some of Grand Central’s trains to call at Peterborough - exactly six years after its most recent proposal was rejected.
Arriva-owned GC is the first open access operator to be allowed to call at the station, which is a key interchange on the East Coast Main Line with routes from Stansted/Norwich to the West Midlands and North West.
The approval will enable two existing daily GC services in each direction - one each from Sunderland and Bradford Interchange to London King’s Cross - to call at Peterborough from “early in the New Year”. Sunday trains will continue to run non-stop through Peterborough. The move falls short of GC’s pre-COVID proposal (rejected by the ORR in December 2017), whereby it also applied for a very early morning service from Wakefield and Doncaster to King’s Cross (arriving before 0730) and a late evening service to Doncaster and Wakefield (leaving London at 2150). Both additional trains were proposed to call at Peterborough, along with two existing Sunderland trains.
Although detailed timings have not been released, it appears that the calls have been made possible by using existing ‘slack’ in timetables, which often has GC trains held at Peterborough to wait for their path.
Previously, GC’s last permitted southern-most stops were York (Sunderland trains) and Doncaster (Bradford trains). GC runs five daily trains from Sunderland and four from Bradford to London.
This is a major milestone for GC, which prides itself on “reaching parts of the country other services don’t” by providing direct links for the North.
Rival LNER declined to comment on ORR’s November 24 decision. Run directly by the Department for Transport using its Operator of Last Resort, LNER (and its predecessor franchises) had previously objected to Peterborough station calls by any open access operators on the basis of revenue extraction.
The move follows a shift in tone from the Department for Transport where, in a change of stance to his predecessors, current Secretary of State Mark Harper has been positive about open access.
In his Bradshaw Address on February 7, Harper said the Government would “support more open access services where it benefits passengers and taxpayers”.
He went on to say: “We’ve seen this work well with Hull Trains and Grand Central as well as Lumo,” adding that “open access operators will play an important role in the industry’s future, especially as we grow new markets and make best use of spare network capacity”.
