West Coast Mainline

[huwt4ng]

Hello,

I am a college student currently writing an essay on the West Coast Mainline fiasco, which I'm sure many of you will have strong opinions on.

I was wondering if someone could help me, as I am looking for some information on the previous operators of the west coast mainline.

When this whole fiasco started, and Richard Branson started contesting the decision, he kept claiming that "Four times before, Virgin have been the runners up in this process, and everytime this has happend the new operators either went bust or ended up in serious financial difficulty".

I have scoured the internet to find out who these 4 companies were who either went bust or got into money trouble, however I can't find anything?

If anyone could give me some guidance on who these companies were, that would be brilliant, and if you could include any dates etc, just to give me somewhere to start looking, that would be fantastic.

Thank you very much,

Huw

[Silver Fox Phil]

Hello Huw and welcome to the forum. I wonder if question refers to past bids like the one the was won by Arriva for the cross country bid in Nov 2009 that stretched from Scotland to Penzants down south!
Anyway hope you get your answers as there are some very clued up people on here.
All the best
Phil

[huwt4ng]

Thank you Phil, after doing alot of digging, I have dicovered that two of the companies were GNER and National Express, however I'm not sure if these were the only companies to defeat virgin in the bidding process.