First Hull Trains

First Hull Trains (formerly Hull Trains ) is the brand name of the British railway company Hull Trains Company Limited. and a subsidiary of First Group. It operates intercity service between the King's Cross Station in London and Kingston upon Hull ( Hull briefly ) in Yorkshire.

History

The company Hull Trains Company Ltd. was established in September 1999 as a joint subsidiary of GB Railways Group Plc (80 % of the shares ) and Renaissance Trains Ltd.. (20 % ) in order to operate passenger trains between London and ( Kingston upon ) Hull via Doncaster and Selby, initially under the name Hull Trains. On this 300 km long relationship no direct trains from other railway companies were offered at this time.

With the acquisition of GB Railways Group by First Group in 2003 acquired the First Group and 80 % of the shares of Hull Trains Company Limited. Since mid- 2008, the affiliation of FirstGroup is also made particularly clear by the company no longer occurs as Hull Trains, but as First Hull Trains.

First Hull Trains is an "open access" operators. The majority of working in the UK passenger railway companies operates resulting in the privatization of the former state railways British Rail subnets that are awarded in franchising process by the Strategic Rail Authority. Hull Trains applied to it, irrespective of access rights to the public rail network (operated by Railtrack and Network Rail ), which were initially granted for a period of two years, from 2002 over a period of ten years. The company is therefore not bound by requirements of the Strategic Rail Authority - however, in contrast to the operators less lucrative subnets also not entitled to any subsidy. The British company -wide tariff system called National Rail is applied at First Hull Trains. In addition, the company offers special rates that apply exclusively within their own trains.

Route network

First Hull Trains took in September 2000 to run on first with three pairs of trains between London and Kingston upon Hull with stops including in Doncaster. Ridership developed positively, so that 2005 Monday to Friday six, four on Saturdays and Sundays and public holidays three compounds are offered in each direction. For the 300 km route between London and Hull trains between 2 hours require an additional 33 minutes and 2 hours 50 minutes. 2004 used approximately 400,000 passengers the offer.

2008 First Hull Trains requested from the Contracting Authority Office of Rail Regulation in addition to an extension of the existing concession and permission to offer its own economic block train journey from summer 2009 between Harrogate, York and London, and from 2010 Grimsby and Lincoln to London.

Rolling stock

When starting, Hull Trains used rented vehicles the company Anglia Railways, which also belonged to the group of companies GB Railways Group. These were four diesel railcars of class "class 170 ". These vehicles are also referred to as " Turbo Star" reach a top speed of 160 km / h and each provide 159 seats.

After the access rights initially granted just over two years were extended to the public rail network by ten years, Hull Trains procured at Bombardier Transportation a new 200 km / h "Pioneer" diesel railcars of class "class 222 ". These vehicles were handed over to Hull Trains from May 2005. Since 2008, First Hull Trains is also two previously by First Great Western used "class 180" railcar a.