Rail for London Limited

[maniacmartin]

I recently wrote to London Overground, and received a reply on letterheaded paper with the London Overground and TfL logos on. The small print on the bottom of the letterheaded paper gave the name and address of Rail for London Limited.

I note that TfL have published some information about the company, but can anyone explain in more simple terms what the role of this company is, and how it relates to Transport for London, Transport Trading Limited and London Overground Rail Operations Limited. I'm a bit confused as to which body does what.

 

[Mike395]

I believe they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of TfL who effectively ensure that contracted rail operations such as LOROL and Tramlink are being operated according to their contract, and are also responsible for high-level customer services issues for these companies

 

[Bald Rick]

RfL is a subsidiary of TfL and looks after DLR, tramlink and those heavy rail services for which it has responsibility for specifying.

LOROL is a company owned by a joint venture of DB Regio and MTR Europe. They have the concession to operate RfLs heavy rail services, branded 'Overground'. The concession is to a very tight specification, compliance with which is monitored by RfL staff co located with LOROL at their Swiss Cottage offices.

 

[Mark_H]

Duedil.com is handy for this sort of thing, although you can only look at 4 or 5 pages a day before it starts nagging you to subscribe. There are quite few similar sites who basically scrape Company's House data and try to resell it to you.

Transport Trading Ltd (https://www.duedil.com/company/03914810/transport-trading-limited) has 17 subsidiaries, including Rail for London Limited (https://www.duedil.com/company/05965930/rail-for-london-limited). RfL are 100% owned by TT, who themselves are 100% owned by TfL. You'll also see that the financials for TT have some very long numbers in them...

LORO, on the other hand, are a franchise.