Wrexham & Shropshire
Wrexham & Shropshire is the operating name of the Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway Company, a train operating company in the United Kingdom. The company has a seven-year agreement to operate passenger train services from Wrexham via Shropshire to London on an open-access basis. Wrexham & Shropshire began running services on 28 April 2008.
The company has restored direct services between London and Shropshire, the previous services operated by Virgin Trains having been withdrawn in 2000. In the most recent National Passenger Survey by Passenger Focus, the independent rail watchdog, Wrexham & Shropshire has come top in the country, with a 99% satisfaction rating - the highest rating in the survey's history.
Wrexham & Shropshire was founded as a joint venture between two existing railway companies: Renaissance Trains and Laing Rail. DB Regio, a subsidiary of the German state railway operator Deutsche Bahn, acquired Laing Rail in January 2008, and with it their interest in Wrexham & Shropshire. The directors of the company include John Nelson and Mike Jones from Renaissance Trains (also directors of First Hull Trains) and Adrian Shooter (Chairman and Managing Director of Chiltern Railways and Chairman of the A.T.O.C.) and Andy Hamilton, both from Laing Rail, Hamilton (former Engineering Director of Chiltern Railways) being appointed as Managing Director.
In September 2009, WSMR announced that from the beginning of 2010, it hoped to transfer operation of the Wrexham & Shropshire-branded services to Chiltern Railways, part of DB Regio UK.
Services
From Wrexham General, the route runs via Chirk, Ruabon and Gobowen (near Oswestry) to Shrewsbury, then via Wellington, Telford Central and Cosford to Wolverhampton. From Wolverhampton, the service has the major obstacle of Birmingham to circumvent: it is routed via and calls at Tame Bridge Parkway and then passes without stopping through New Street and Tyseley or Birmingham International and Coventry, before joining the Chiltern Main Line to call at Leamington Spa. Trains then call at Banbury and finally London Marylebone.
Under the terms of Wrexham & Shropshire's Track Access Contract, trains are not permitted to call at Coventry, or to pick up (southbound) or set down (northbound) at Wolverhampton. The agreement does allow for WSMR trains to serve Birmingham International, but the company's timetable does not include this. Services do call at Tame Bridge Parkway, a station with a substantial car park and good bus services, with the additional benefit of providing Walsall with a direct service to London.
From 13 December 2009 trains call unrestricted at both Banbury and Leamington Spa.
Timetable
Wrexham & Shropshire's initial timetable was for five trains per weekday between Wrexham and London with, since the introduction of its revised winter timetable in December 2008, an end-to-end journey time of around 4 hours on weekdays. The company says journey times are longer than it would like, but changes in timetabling and track slots have enabled a reduction of 30 minutes in the journey from before December 2008.[citation needed] Following some monitoring, WSMR trains are now permitted to travel at 100 mph between Princes Risborough and Bicester where previously they had been restricted to 60 mph. WSMR trains must share tracks with the intensive Chiltern Railways service and there are few overtaking opportunities.
In March 2009 the weekday service was reduced to four trains a day, one of which runs only between Marylebone and Shrewsbury. WSMR blamed the economic downturn for the cancelled services (10.17 from Marylebone and 17.23 from Wrexham). It hopes to reinstate the services as soon as possible, and no staff have been cut. The fourth service will be restored to Wrexham from December 2009.
Restrictions on Services
WSMR's original proposal was to start operations by summer 2007, but plans were delayed because of a "moderation of competition" protection clause in Virgin Trains' West Coast franchise agreement. Unless Virgin was willing to agree to WSMR services calling at Wolverhampton, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) said it would have to reject the WSMR proposals. A revised Track Access Application was submitted, which was subsequently approved by the ORR. Under the amended proposals, WSMR trains call at Wolverhampton only to pick up passengers northbound, and set down southbound. To offset the reduction in potential passengers, services call additionally at Tame Bridge Parkway.
Rival Service
In February 2008, Virgin Trains announced through services between London and Wrexham on a trial basis from December 2008, with one train per day on weekdays in each direction. Should the service prove successful, Virgin plans to introduce more services during the week and at weekends. Virgin's services will operate from London Euston along the West Coast Main Line via Crewe and Chester using Class 221 SuperVoyager trains, with a journey time to Wrexham of approximately 2½ hours - compared with WSMR's average of 4 hours. However, as this will be an extension of the London-Chester service, it will not serve stations in Shropshire nor the West Midlands.
Threat of Permanent Withdrawal of Services
Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) has aspirations to operate through trains from Aberystwyth to London Marylebone. This proposal was rejected by the Office of Rail Regulation in March 2010 because it was concerned about the financial viability of the service. DB Regio UK has said in a letter to the Office of Rail Regulation that it would have been very likely that it would cease funding the Wrexham and Shropshire operation immediately, causing the operator to cease to operate, if the ATW agreement had been approved. ATW had removed stops at Shrewsbury, Wellington and Telford from its proposed 06:30 Aberystwyth - London service which it said stopped a duplication of WSMR services from those stations. WSMR is, however, reported to have said in a covering letter to the ORR "We believe that this proposal - if approved - would push back 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".
Rollingstock
Services are operated by locomotive-hauled trains, each consisting of a 125 mph (200 km/h)-capable Class 67 diesel locomotive, four Mark 3 carriages, and a Mark 3 Driving Van Trailer (DVT). Wrexham & Shropshire has obtained four complete train sets, with the Mk 3 coaches on lease from parent company DB Regio UK and five Class 67 locomotives from EWS.
In the week to 8 October 2006, a trial run was carried out using the EWS Company Train from London Marylebone to Wrexham General via the proposed route. Originally the locomotive/DVT arrangement was used for expediency in getting a test run organised. However, as the test train arrived on time (despite a delay at Wolverhampton), it demonstrated that such a combination was a viable option. There were regular trains between Wrexham and Marylebone to test the timetable between March and the launch in late April 2008.
Services began on 28 April 2008. As the DVTs and dedicated WSMR Mk 3 coaches were still being refurbished by Marcroft, all trains were run initially with a Class 67 at each end of the train, the passenger accommodation consisting of three or four Mk 3 coaches (on hire from Cargo-D). This initial measure required the daily use of three coaching sets and six locomotives operating the trains top and tail. However, now that the DVTs have completed refurbishment, the second Class 67 is not needed. The trains are allowed to operate at up to 100 mph (160 km/h) although there are few opportunities to do so.
Earlier proposals included the possible use of diesel multiple units, such as the Class 158 or Class 170 but they were dropped in favour of the better passenger experience offered by a locomotive-hauled service.
Welsh Assembly Funding
In October 2006 the Welsh Assembly announced that WSMR did not qualify for employment grants which it had intended to use to improve the facilities at Wrexham General station in order to turn it into the company's operational centre. This led to speculation that, if the funding could not be found, the company might have to move to Shrewsbury, which would affect the number of services it could run to Wrexham. However, in November 2006 the Welsh Assembly announced that the WSMR was eligible for the money and, as a result, a site survey at Wrexham General was undertaken. The depot would be open to all train-operating companies.