Grand Central, the trains group blamed by GNER for threatening its existence, is on course to launch competing services in September, ten months after it had intended to start up.

The company had planned to launch services late last year, but delays in sourcing rolling stock pushed plans back to this month. A change of major shareholder earlier in the year means that now the company is set on an autumn start.

The launch of Grand Central’s direct London-to-Sunderland service is likely to come just weeks before GNER hands management of its services between London, Leeds, the North East and Scotland to a new operator.

GNER agreed to let the Department for Transport (DfT) find a new operator for the East Coast mainline late last year, after it said that it would have difficulty meeting its projected passenger numbers, in part because of the launch of the new Sunderland service.

Grand Central will become only the second company to launch scheduled services outside the regulated franchise system, which governs services run by Virgin Trains, Stagecoach, FirstGroup, National Express and Arriva.

The open access system was developed at privatisation to run alongside the franchise system, allowing companies to develop new routes, which, if approved, they could run themselves, without subsidy.

However, winning approval has not proved easy. The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is responsible for approving new routes, working separately from the DfT, which hands out franchises. The ORR must be confident that there is a case for a new service. “You can’t put on a service that would compete with another service without compensating benefits,” Ian Yeowart, Grand Central’s managing director, said. “In our position, the compensating benefits are all the new services to Teesside and Hartlepool.

“The difficulty is that almost all services are brand new . . . If you haven’t got any services, you have to do a complete business model from the bottom up.”

Mr Yeowart is typical of many former BR managers, who are tapping into the potential of open access. “There are a lot of us who left the industry at privatisation, but always felt we had something to offer,” he said.

In 2004 Grand Central lodged its London-to-Sunderland plan with the ORR, which gave the go-ahead early last year. However, the launch was complicated when GNER challenged the ORR’s decision at a judicial review, which went in the regulator’s favour.

“When the DfT let the GNER franchise, it was let, pretty well, on the assumption that Grand Central wouldn’t get a path,” George Muir, director-general of the Association of Train Operating Companies, said. That assumption proved to have been misplaced, as the ORR cleared the way later for Grand Central. GNER’s experience has, however, improved understanding. Mr Muir said that would-be franchisees were now “much clearer what the rules of the game are”.

Grand Central is also proposing a link between London and Halifax and Bradford.

Hull Trains, which is now 80 per cent owned by FirstGroup, was the first to launch an open access service when it started direct services between London Kings Cross and Hull, using the East Coast mainline. The service, which also links Brough, Howden and Selby to London, carries half a million passengers a year, most of them from stations not served by GNER.

Reconaissance Trains, a private group headed by former BR managers, has been pioneering efforts to launch open access services since 1997. Its directors were behind Hull Trains and now hope to win approval for a joint venture that will link Wrexham, Shrewsbury and Telford with London. They are also working on links between Glasgow and Liverpool and Glasgow and Nottingham, as well as a service linking the Humber Coast to London Stratford.

Rail experts see opportunities to reopen disused section of track. Sir Bob Reid, the former BR chairman, is supporting the EastWestRail consortium, which wants to recreate a link between Oxford and Cambridge, bypassing London.

En route

— Grand Central London-Sunderland: service to launch in autumn London-Bradford: under consideration at ORR London-Huddersfield: competition limits on West Coast will delay ORR ruling

— Renaissance Trains London-Hull: operating Wrexham & Shropshire: under consideration Humber Coast-London: under consideration Glasgow-Nottingham/Liverpool: under consideration

— EastWestRail M4 corridor to M11 corridor in planning stage

Source: train companies

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