Shropshire rail link bid to London is sent to regulator

Approval from the regulator is the final hurdle needed to clear before Virgin Trains can put wheels on tracks.

Bosses envisage there being no problems and still hope trains will be up and running between Shrewsbury and London by the end of the year.

Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard said today he was confident the application would be approved and said it was "good news for the whole of Shropshire".

A Virgin spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that an application has been submitted to the Office of Rail Regulation.

"The process normally takes around four weeks unless there are any problems or queries they need to come back to us with.

"The date of December is certainly one we are still looking at for trains to be running from Shropshire to London again."

Bethan Thomas, of the Office of Rail Regulation, added: "We have received the formal application from Network Rail.

"This follows a standard industry consultation of potentially affected operators and funders.

"We will now consider the application in line with our published criteria and procedures which includes consideration of any comments made by industry consultees and the wider performance and capacity implications for existing services and the rest of the network.

"However, unlike Virgin's previous proposals, this application is to extend current services to and from Shrewsbury and Blackpool rather than introducing additional trains on the very busy south end of the west coast main line, so the capacity and performance implications are likely to be less of an issue this time.

"We will make it public once we have made our decision on this application."

The Shropshire Star has campaigned for the direct link, organising a petition that was presented in the Commons.

The new service will be timetabled so that people will be able to take a day trip to London.

On a visit to the county in June, rail minister Stephen Hammond spoke in favour of restoring the direct link and said he was "very hopeful" it would get the necessary sign-off from the ORR.

Under the plans, Shrewsbury would have two services in each direction Monday to Saturday and one service in each direction on Sunday. All services will also run through Telford Central and Wellington train stations.

Monday to Saturday services would leave Shrewsbury at 6.39am and 3.24pm, with return services leaving London Euston at 10.23am and 6.23pm. On Sunday, a single service will leave Shrewsbury at 3.20pm and return from London at 7pm.

Mr Pritchard said: "With Virgin Trains and Network Rail now in agreement, the last hurdle is the Office of Rail Regulation.

"Having met them, I am confident they will approve the application.

"This will be good news for the whole of Shropshire."

As part of the deal, Virgin said there would be "significant improvements" for customers with the introduction of free superfast WiFi, more seats and new services.

Virgin Trains previously lost out to FirstGroup in the battle for a new 13-year West Coast franchise, but the process was scrapped by the Department for Transport due to errors in the bidding process. It resulted in a temporary deal allowing Virgin to run the West Coast service.

Virgin is paying £430 million to the Government over the course of the contract, which at £155.3 million a year is a 58 per cent increase on the £98.1 million a year paid in the current short-term management contract.