| [OTD] 1st April 2006 - Greater Western Franchise takes over our trains Posted by grahame at 09:06, 1st April 2026 |     |
Twenty years ago today, Wessex Trains, Thames Trains and Great Western were combined into a single franchise, run by First, that operated most of the passenger trains in the Thames Valley west from London, Wessex, the Cotswolds,and the South West, with incursions into South Wales.
What do you consider the key events of the last 20 years? Was the change a success? What will the next 20 years bring?
Images under collective commons licenses
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paddington_Station_Panorama.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Great_Western_Link#/media/File:166217_at_Reading.JPG
| Re: [OTD] 1st April 2006 - Greater Western Franchise takes over our trains Posted by Mark A at 16:07, 1st April 2026 | |
Twenty years ago today, Wessex Trains, Thames Trains and Great Western were combined into a single franchise, run by First, that operated most of the passenger trains in the Thames Valley west from London, Wessex, the Cotswolds,and the South West, with incursions into South Wales.
One of the losses from this was the ambition associated with Wessex trains, who took the unglamorous basket of leftover services that were regional railways and put them on an upward trajectory. Passengers needing inter-regional services have lost out and opportunities for development have withered away.
Mark
| Re: [OTD] 1st April 2006 - Greater Western Franchise takes over our trains Posted by Mark A at 16:16, 1st April 2026 | |
One of the gains: an end-to-end electrified railway between Paddington and Cardiff.
Mark
| Re: [OTD] 1st April 2006 - Greater Western Franchise takes over our trains Posted by JayMac at 00:18, 2nd April 2026 | |
Was it all just one big April Fool's Joke?
| Re: [OTD] 1st April 2006 - Greater Western Franchise takes over our trains Posted by grahame at 07:30, 2nd April 2026 | |
Was it all just one big April Fool's Joke?
I know that's supposed to be a rhetorical question ... but it reminds me of various comments at the time that it was an inauspicious date to start the new franchise. Over the 20 years, so much has happened. Much good, and I rate for passengers and wannabe passengers, for the environment, for the economy - transport as a service. But also many imperfections, lost opportunities, frustrations, other influences.
It is probable that the First era as we have seen it will come to an end later this year, and we have no certainly where we will be in another five, ten, or twenty years. It's a time of opportunity, but also of risk. Passenger journey numbers (across the UK main line rail network) have risen from 1 billion per annum to 1.7 billion per annum. The big increase was in the first 10 years of the 20 - since then it has been a much flatter line - though that line corrupted by the external effect of Covid who's influence, amongst other influences, has changed the whole shape of travel and indeed life in general; we have "recovered" but with everlasting changes.
