Hypothetical - Could a TOC choose to buy infrastructure improvements?

[py_megapixel]

I know this would be unlikely to happen, but if a TOC with a small diesel fleet wanted to buy a fleet of electric trains and have a homogeneous fleet, could they just pay for electrification of parts of their route which weren't already electrified? Would they be able to coordinate it themselves, or would they simply pay Network Rail the cost of doing it? What about building extra platforms or tracks?

 

[Domh245]

NR would have to do the work as it's their infrastructure, but if any TOC was mad enough to stump up the sums required, then I'm sure NR would be open to it. The fact that pretty much all franchises are relatively short term means that there's pretty much no chance of it occurring, as they'd only have a few years to try and recoup the costs incurred by the time the work is done.

ISTR Hull Trains were proposing something like this for Hull, but nothing came of it and now that they've got 802s there's zero chance of them proposing it!

 

[pdeaves]

NR would have to do the work as it's their infrastructure,

Not necessarily. Yes, NR would need involvement, but they don't have to do the work (I am working on a scheme that uses the 'NR-involvement-only' model right now). Usually NR would do the work but not always.

 

[dgl]

excluding the electrification part isn't that exactly what Chiltern Railways did/had to do as part of their long franchise award.

 

[Energy]

excluding the electrification part isn't that exactly what Chiltern Railways did/had to do as part of their long franchise award.

I believe so although they have a 20 year franchise, I doubt many franchises want to spend the amount of money for a franchise of just 7 years. TfW is getting some investment in infrastructure as it is a 15 year franchise.

 

[TheWalrus]

I’m sure Chiltern did something like this with their Evergreen project?

 

[edwin_m]

I did some work some years ago for a commuter TOC that was looking at targeted speed improvements so the first few trains in the peak direction could dash back empty and form a second working during the same peak. Because of the peakiness of the service pattern there were diagrams that only did one revenue journey in each peak, and eliminating some of these would save a lot of money on trains. However it all fell down, not sure if it was because of DfT/NR concerns or because (as above) the work would have taken too long to deliver benefits during the franchise term.

 

[Bald Rick]

I did some work some years ago for a commuter TOC that was looking at targeted speed improvements so the first few trains in the peak direction could dash back empty and form a second working during the same peak. Because of the peakiness of the service pattern there were diagrams that only did one revenue journey in each peak, and eliminating some of these would save a lot of money on trains. However it all fell down, not sure if it was because of DfT/NR concerns or because (as above) the work would have taken too long to deliver benefits during the franchise term.

More likely that it would have cost a lot more to do than anticipated.

 

[Bald Rick]

To answer the OP, yes a TOC can do this, but they would need to convince their bankers that they would get their money back on the investment in cash terms, and would need to get approval from DfT (or whoever specifies their service) to vary their services.