First Harrogate Trains

First Harrogate Trains

Franchise	Open access operator
Main regions	Harrogate Line East Coast Main Line
Parent company	FirstGroup (80%) Renaissance Trains (20%)
Other
Website	www.harrogatetrains.co.uk
Route map Harrogate Cleethorpes Starbeck Grimsby Town Knaresborough Barnetby Cattal Market Rasen Hammerton Lincoln Poppleton Sleaford York Donington Parkway (new station) Doncaster Spalding Retford Peterborough Grantham Huntingdon Stevenage London King's Cross This diagram: view talk edit

First Harrogate Trains¹ was a proposed open access operator with ambitions to run passenger rail services between Harrogate and London King's Cross via York.²³⁴⁵ The company was a subsidiary of Hull Trains, then owned by FirstGroup (80%) and Renaissance Trains (20%).

The company proposed to run from Harrogate to London King's Cross with up to four services each way per day.⁶ The application to run trains was rejected by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) in February 2009.⁷ It cited that the services would not bring enough new patronage and thus rely on abstracting revenue from existing train operating companies.⁸

First Harrogate Trains also applied to operate four trains per day from Cleethorpes to London Kings Cross, with an additional four between Lincoln Central and London, and to open a new station at Donnington Parkway. In 2009, this application was rejected by the ORR.²³⁹

Had the proposal been successful, it was intended that services would commence in the summer of 2009.¹⁰

The preferred rolling stock to be used was Class 180 Adelante or Class 222 Pioneer trains, the types used by Hull Trains previously.⁶¹¹