East Coast
East Coast is a train operating company in the United Kingdom, running high speed passenger services on the East Coast Main Line between London and Scotland that started operations on 14 November 2009.
East Coast is a trading name of East Coast Main Line Company Ltd (ECMLCo), a subsidiary of Directly Operated Railways Limited, which was formed by the Department for Transport as an operator of last resort when National Express refused to offer any more financial support to its National Express East Coast (NXEC) subsidiary and lost its franchise.
The government stated it would temporarily re-nationalise the franchise and transfer the assets of NXEC to Directly Operated Railways, which would retain the NXEC service levels, before re-tendering the franchise in 2010.
East Coast operates long distance passenger services principally from London King's Cross to Edinburgh Waverley via Newcastle railway station, and from King's Cross to Leeds railway station, with other services reaching into Yorkshire and Northern and Central Scotland.
Rollingstock
East Coast has inherited the rolling stock operated by NXEC, which encompasses Class 43 diesel locomotives and Mark 3 coaching stock (InterCity 125), and Class 91 electric locomotives and Mark 4 coaches (InterCity 225).
The original franchise holder, GNER, undertook a major refurbishment of its rolling stock from 2003, which it titled "Project Mallard". Between 2003 and 2006, every Mark 4 coach in its fleet was upgraded and refurbished, while work started on refurbishing the Mark 3 coaches under GNER in early 2007. This work continued under NXEC, with the final InterCity 125 set completed in October 2009.
East Coast offers free Wi-Fi to passengers in both first and standard class.
As part of an overhaul of the Mark 4 coaches, used by East Coast, the coaches will be repainted from the current mix of GNER/NXEC interim livery, to a new silver livery dubbed 'Silver link'. The repaint will be started in 2010, and the idea is that a plain base livery can be easily customised for a future operator.
In March 2008 National Express made an application for additional track access to a number of destinations. In this application they indicated that the additional services would be operated using Class 180 Adelante DMUs. In the event that East Coast is able to procure the Adelantes, it will then not proceed with its plan for the Class 90 hauled trains.
Currently Northern Rail are sub-leasing three Adelante units. These are being sub-leased from East Coast, meaning three Adelante units are confirmed for East Coast. Two extra units for EC have also been leased, bringing the current total of leased Adelantes to five units.
Directly Operated Railways has stated its unhappiness with the Class 180 units for the planned additional services specified in the franchise agreement, and has indicated that it wishes to return to the original proposal of using locomotive hauled trains instead. The original plan was for 110 mph (180 km/h) trains pulled by Class 90 locomotives. However, DOR has raised the possibility of obtaining Grand Central's three 125 mph (200 km/h) capable HSTs for these services, for which it would transfer the Class 180s under lease to EC, giving Grand Central a single, uniform fleet.
Future HST
As part of the new InterCity East Coast franchise agreement, National Express would have participated in the Intercity Express Programme, which would see a new high-speed train enter service. The project is intended to replace all of the remaining InterCity 125 and InterCity 225 rolling stock in operation, and would have seen National Express be one of several operators from 2012/2013 onwards.