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National Rail
*** Shopping-Tip: National Rail
image:National Rail logo.gif frame|right|National Rail uses the BR double-arrow logo
'''National Rail''' is a brand name of the
Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). The brand and company are jointly owned by the privatised rail companies of
Great Britain which were formed from the passenger rail service previously provided by
British Rail, the now-defunct state-owned rail operator.
The term is usually used to distinguish these services from other rail passenger services in the
United Kingdom, which do not have an ex-British Rail background. This distinction is important because National Rail services share a common ticketing structure and ticket inter-availability that do not necessarily extend to other services.
National Rail and Network Rail
Image:British_rail_ticket_Wellington_Shrewsbury.jpg right|thumb|300px|Rail Ticket from [[Wellington, Shropshire|Wellington to
Shrewsbury]]
The term ''National Rail'' should not be confused with the term ''
Network Rail''. National Rail is a brand used to explain and promote passenger railway services. Network Rail is an organisation responsible for owning and managing the fixed assets of a network of railway lines.
Most Network Rail lines also carry freight traffic and some lines are freight only. Some passenger services running on Network Rail lines, for example
Eurostar,
Heathrow Express and the
London Underground, are not part of the National Rail network.
Train operating companies
{{main|List of companies operating trains in the United Kingdom}}
Passenger trains on the National Rail network are operated by one of 25 privately owned '''Train Operating Companies''' (TOCs). The
Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) provides a common voice for the TOCs and provides some centralised coordination, for example the provision of a national timetable and journey planner. The National Rail brand continues to use BR's double-arrow logo.
Other UK passenger rail operators
British Rail's operations never stretched to
Northern Ireland, which has its own rail operator in
Northern Ireland Railways (NIR). As a consequence NIR is not part of the National Rail network.
Several UK cities have their own
metro or
tram systems, which are also not part of the National Rail network. These include the
London Underground,
Docklands Light Railway,
Tramlink Croydon Tramlink,
Glasgow Subway,
Tyne and Wear Metro,
Manchester Metrolink,
Sheffield Supertram,
Midland Metro and
Nottingham Express Transit.
Two recently inaugurated railway services,
Heathrow Express and
Eurostar, are also not part of the National Rail network.
Finally there are a significant number of privately owned and/or heritage railways, as listed in the
List of British heritage and private railways list of British heritage and private railways, which are not part of the National Rail network.
Ticketing
National Rail services have a common ticketing structure inherited from the former
British Rail. Through tickets are available between any pair of stations on the National Rail network, and can be bought from any station ticket office. Most tickets are inter-available among services of all operators on routes appropriate to the journey being made. A notable exception is for journeys between London and Gatwick Airport, for which, as of March 2006, three operators issue different tickets valid only on their own services. Additionally, operators on some other routes offer operator-specific tickets that are cheaper than the inter-available ones.
This common ticketing structure does not apply to operators that are not part of the National Rail network, although through tickets to and from National Rail stations involving the services of
Heathrow Express and
London Underground are available.
See also
*
UK topics
*
Rail transport in the United Kingdom
External links
-
National Rail website
Reference
* List of train operating companies from [http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tocs_maps/tocs/ National Rail website], retrieved 6th March 2006.
-
Collection of Google Earth locations of National Rail stations (Requires [http://earth.google.com Google Earth software]) from the Google Earth Community forum.
Category:Railway companies of the United Kingdom
cs:National Rail
fr:National Rail
no:National Rail
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