Millions could be spent on new trains as Richard Branson’s Virgin Group makes its bid to break Eurostar’s monopoly on services through the Channel Tunnel.
According to The Telegraph, the company run by the billionaire boss is planning on operating trains from the UK to the continent by 2029.
It aims to sign a contract for the trains as early as this quarter to get ahead of startup Evolyn, which is also putting together plans to run trains from London to the continent.
Project lead Phil Whittingham said Virgin will choose between two suppliers it has shortlisted and is evaluating models from Alstom, Siemens, Hitachi and Talgo.
The order is likely to be worth more than £500 million, based on the value of recent deals for similar rolling stock.
Virgin Trains operated in the UK from 1997 to 2019 after the railways were privatised.
The franchise covered long-distance passenger services on the West Coast Main Line between London, the West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and southern Scotland, consequently connecting six of the UK’s largest cities: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, which have a combined metropolitan population of over 18 million.
It had around 3,400 employees in 2015.
The Virgin Trains brand was also used on the legally and operationally separate Virgin Trains East Coast from 2015 until 2018, and previously on Virgin CrossCountry, which operated between 1997 and 2007.
The contract expired on 7 December 2019 (having been originally scheduled for expiry in March 2020) and Virgin did not contest losing the franchise after its joint venture partner, Stagecoach, was disqualified due to an invalid bid in April 2019.
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