Wrexham & Shropshire Demise

[DMU180]

Apologies if this has already been covered but I have been having A look at the demise of Wrexham and Shropshire and it seems that Arriva Trains Wales proposed a direct Aberystwyth to London service which W&S complained about. Having consulted Wikipedia it seems that both operators were owned by Arriva. The W&S MD said "We believe that this proposal – if approved – would push the date of profitability of WSMR by at least a year. As a result of this our owning group would be unable to sustain additional and continuing losses and the WSMR service would cease to exist." Why would Arriva group allow ATW to request a service to rival one it already owned and operated?

 

[cjmillsnun]

Probably because there would've been possibility of large numbers of beer tokens from Government (most likely the Welsh Assembly) to ATW as a franchised operator which would not be offered to W&S an open access operator. Or it could've been a publicity stunt by ATW to allow Arriva to can W&S which was haemorrhaging £££

 

[Nora93]

You'll probably find that this was the time when Wrexham & Shropshire was under the DB Regio umbrella but before Deutsche Bahn bought out Arriva - so at that point, they were competitors.

 

[transmanche]

Apologies if this has already been covered but I have been having A look at the demise of Wrexham and Shropshire and it seems that Arriva Trains Wales proposed a direct Aberystwyth to London service which W&S complained about. Having consulted Wikipedia it seems that both operators were owned by Arriva. The W&S MD said "We believe that this proposal – if approved – would push the date of profitability of WSMR by at least a year. As a result of this our owning group would be unable to sustain additional and continuing losses and the WSMR service would cease to exist." Why would Arriva group allow ATW to request a service to rival one it already owned and operated?

Timing is key here. DB Regio took full control of WSMR in September 2009 (prior to that date, they had a 50% share), but DB didn't purchase Arriva until August 2010 - which is after the ATW application was rejected by ORR.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

WSMR was not then an Arriva company.
It was started as a joint venture between Laing Rail (owners of the Chiltern franchise) and private partners Renaissance Rail.
DB then bought Laing Rail/Chiltern, and later bought Arriva (who were operating ATW and XC).
DB eventually transferred all its UK passenger rail interests to its Arriva subsidiary.
The ATW Aberystwyth-Marylebone episode was a spoiler really, before all these corporate changes.
I'm pretty sure WSMR was in Laing/Renaissance ownership at that time, and Arriva was an unrelated competitor until the DB takeover of both.
The Aberystwyth proposal was withdrawn because of the incompatibility of using franchise resources on open access services.

 

[DMU180]

That makes complete sense, thanks for your replies!

 

[BanburyBlue]

I thought one of the issues was Virgin West Coast deciding they would offer direct Euston - Wrexham services?

 

[AlterEgo]

I thought one of the issues was Virgin West Coast deciding they would offer direct Euston - Wrexham services?

It was more to do with their moderation of competition objection to W+S making an open call at Wolverhampton.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The Aberystwyth proposal was withdrawn because of the incompatibility of using franchise resources on open access services.

That was also what really did for Wrexham & Shropshire. DB Regio attempted to use their W&S services to fulfil franchise commitments for their Chiltern Railways subsidiary. DafT took a very very dim view of this and fined Chiltern a significant amount of money for doing it. Without them being able to use W&S to run Chiltern services- the W&S would have to be in addition to the extra Chiltern services they'd committed to- they decided W&S wasn't profitable and closed it down. The stock was transferred to Chiltern and is now used on their Mainline Silver trains.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

That was also what really did for Wrexham & Shropshire. DB Regio attempted to use their W&S services to fulfil franchise commitments for their Chiltern Railways subsidiary. DafT took a very very dim view of this and fined Chiltern a significant amount of money for doing it. Without them being able to use W&S to run Chiltern services- the W&S would have to be in addition to the extra Chiltern services they'd committed to- they decided W&S wasn't profitable and closed it down. The stock was transferred to Chiltern and is now used on their Mainline Silver trains.

Strictly, it was ORR who discovered the Chiltern/WSMR blurring of their access agreements and levied the fine, but undoubtedly the DfT was happy about the result.
Another fallout from the DB takeover of Chiltern and Arriva was that they were forced to stump up the second LHCS set for ATW to use between North Wales and Manchester.

 

[krus_aragon]

The ATW Aberystwyth-Marylebone episode was a spoiler really, before all these corporate changes.

The only element of the proposal that came to light was the rolling stock refresh: the refurbishments pictured in the literature for the Marylebone services strongly reflects what was done for their 158 fleet as a whole.