ORR grants Virgin Trains access to Temple Mills: the low risk option

The UK's Office of Rail and Road has today decided that Virgin Trains should have access to the Temple Mills depot in east London to maintain its future Channel Tunnel fleet, and has rejected applications from Trenitalia, Gemini and Evolyn to use the facility. It has also, importantly, rejected Eurostar's position that only the incumbent operator should be able to use the depot. ORR has published a press release about the decision (web page) and decision letter (PDF).

The crucial line in the press release is this:

Overall, Virgin Trains’ plans were more financially and operationally robust than those of other applicants, and it provided clear evidence of investor backing and an agreement in principle to deliver the necessary and appropriate rolling stock.

This is the gist of it. Virgin's bid was simple, deliverable, achievable, rather uninspiring, and low risk. Reading its submissions prior to the decision (you can find them all here) you can imagine ORR nodding along and understanding what the implication of each part would be.

By contrast Gemini's bid was radical - to not use St Pancras at all and terminate at Stratford. But this idea was marked down in ORR's response, as it could not be fully costed. That might be justifiable, short term, but the capacity constraint at St Pancras is not going to go away. It is just likely not going to be Gemini that's going to be finding a solution to that problem.

To not go with Trenitalia's bid is harder to understand as so much of the Italian operator's submission to ORR was redacted in public. I cannot believe they did not have finance in place, but little is known about the detail of their rolling stock strategy as a result of all the redactions. Trenitalia is the only operator that could, theoretically, run to London without access to Temple Mills - it will be interesting to now see how they proceed.

There are also losers from this. Those in Kent who have been pushing for the re-opening of Ebbsfleet and Ashford have little to cheer, as Virgin is not keen on those stations (and neither is the incumbent Eurostar either). Both Gemini (for Ebbsfleet) and Trenitalia (for Ashford) were keener.

Also the prospect of seeing direct trains from London to Germany and Switzerland is a more distant prospect today, as the Avelia Stream trains Virgin intends to order from Alstom will not be able to run under the 15kV electrification in those countries (as per Virgin's submission to ORR in the summer, even though Virgin has more recently not ruled this out equipping the trains with 15kV entirely), so if anyone is to serve those destinations it is going to have to be Eurostar - and we have heard that from them before, and it would require their Avelia Horizon double deck trains to do it.

So today marks an important step towards competition through the Channel Tunnel. Given Eurostar's sluggish complacency as the incumbent operator that has to be welcomed. But in opting for Virgin Trains - the most conservative and low risk of the rivals - I can't help having this nagging feeling there is some opportunity missed here, even if, I suppose, some competition here is better than none at all.

[Update 30.10.2025, 17:10]
I have just been pointed to some information that I might have been too critical re. the absence of 15kV trains from Virgin's plans - text adapted accordingly.