The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has rejected an application to introduce new train services between Marchwood and Southampton in Hampshire, and London Waterloo.
The application was submitted by Grand Union Trains under its Alliance Rail banner, and would have envisaged eight return trains per day between Marchwood and London, and seven return trains per day between Marchwood and Southampton.
The trains to London Waterloo would travel via the South West Main Lineal and call at Totton, Southampton Central, Southampton Airport, Eastleigh, Winchester, Basingstoke and Hook.
Alliance Rail submitted its application to run the services in April 2025, using refurbished Class 769 bi-modal (electrical/diesel) rolling stock. A timetable has been planned, and the trains have received certification to be operated on the South West Main Line for testing at up to 100 mph.
The line to Marchwood is known as the Waterside Line, and a public consultation into the reopening was held in September 2022. Alliance Rail thought that it would be part-funded from the Department for Transport’s (DfT) Restoring Your Railway initiative, and that Marchwood station would be reopened, and a brand-new station would be opened in Hythe.
Grand Union, under its Alliance Trains banner, has also submitted an application to operate five trains per day between Cardiff and Edinburgh with new trains built by Hitachi.
“While we have been rejected at times on previous applications, the ORR position in its previous decision letters has always been clear and correctly documented. We have never previously had reason to publicly comment on ORR rejection letters, but the content of this decision letter from the ORR is shoddy, unevidenced and, concerningly, factually incorrect in many areas.”
Ian Yeowart, Managing Director, Alliance Rail
Responses
What a depressing response from the ORR. All they seem to do is stifle any new ideas. No doubt when GBR is in full swing the dead hand of Nationalisation will continue to reject any proposed new services.
I fear it will. Nationalised industries hate any competition which shows up deficiencies in the service they provide. I fear that open access services will slowly be squeezed out.
Was this refusal anything to do with the proposed use of the 769 units? Great Western proposed using them on the Reading-Guildford-Redhill-Gatwick route, with a possible extension from Reading to Didcot and Oxford, but GW inexplicably pulled out of this. Was that the result of interference from the ORR?
I wonder if this rejection reflects a new adversity by the Govt for open access services that compete with the new nationalised railway?
This was always BR’s policy when they ran the last fully nationalised UK railway – they made it very hard indeed even to run one-off private charters, putting all sorts of obstacles in organisers’s way. And of course during BR days, it was completely out of the question for a private operator to run any sort of scheduled service.