Attended their Stakeholder Event in Newcastle today. GNER is an open access operator (owned by Arriva) who wish to provide a new hourly Edinburgh – Newcastle – London non stop service. Their vision is impressive and they are aiming for very high levels of customer service, building on what is already associated with the GNER brand name. SENRUG’s concerns are that the rival bid from First Group, who plan to have their trains stop at Morpeth, would do more for South East Northumberland, also the number of additional services running north of Newcastle might take up all the capacity between Newcastle Station and Benton Junction, making re-opening of the Ashington Blyth & Tyne Line more difficult. Additionally. SENRUG wants to see a north of Morpeth local service, and the more super-fast non stopping services running up and down the line will make this more problematic, though not an issue that can not be solved by re-instatement of passing loops. But nevertheless, an impressive presentation from GNER. We applaud their vision, and agree with their statement that the overall capacity of the railway must grow in line with the new demands being placed on it. Also saw Richard McClean, MD of Grand Central (an existing Arriva owned Open Access company, and had a useful chat with him not just about Grand Central, but on Arriva’s operations generally, including our old chestnut of bus rail integration at Morpeth and Cramlington stations.
