Grand Union gets ORR permission from Stirling to London

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) have given new open access operator Grand Union trains access to run services from London Euston north to Stirling in Scotland. Trains on this route are scheduled to start in June 2025 and will include intermediate stops at: Milton Keynes Central, Nuneaton, Crewe, Preston, Carlisle, Lockerbie, Motherwell, Whifflet, Greenfauds and Larbet. These four daily return services would give Larbet, Greenfauds and Whufflet their first direct trains to London.

Stephanie Tobyn, ORR Director of Strategy, Policy and & Reform, has said that: “Our decision helps increase services for passengers and boost competition on Britain’s railway network. By providing more trains serving new destinations, open access operators offer passengers more choice in the origin and price of their journey leading to better outcomes for rail users.”

The route will most likely be run by existing, currently off-lease diesel Class 221 Super Voyagers and Class 222 Meridians. However though, at the time of the proposal Grand Union stated that they planned to use Rail Operations Groups’s brand new Tri-Mode Class 93 fleet along with a rake of ex-LNER Mk. 4 carriges complete with a Mk. 4 DVT. Interestingly, the space inside the DVT was planned to be used for various freight including a refrigerated space for NHS biological materials. This is all now highly unlikely.

Grand Union had proposed this route to the ORR in 2018 but the future open-access operator decided not to start services on this proposal due to the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic.