The History of Hull Trains - Hull's link to London. | Open Access Operators #1

Hello & welcome to the first episode in my new series: Open Access Operators (renamed from Open Access Annals)! In this series I look at the history of specific open access rail operators (operators who are not franchised or contracted to run services by the government, hence ran at the risk of private companies - used to promote competition and low fares) and how they've developed year by year, just like the definition of annals! In this first episode I look at Hull Trains, and how they went from a fledgling operator to a huge competitor of the ECML operators, owned by giant corporation First. I hope you enjoy this new series.
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Any content featured in this video has been accredited to the correct author, where possible, with permission. However, I may sometimes mistakenly miscredit content, so please let me know if I have got credits wrong for authors of content featured in this video.
Any views mentioned in this video are of my opinion and my opinion only. I am impartial and will never be swayed by a company to not tell the truth, however will sometimes speak from my own viewpoint. I always attempt to use sources that are from sites that I personally trust; BBC, Sky News etc, and I will always attempt to portray the whole picture of the subject in my videos.
References:
Wikipedia (and accreditted sources)
BBC
The Guardian
Sky News
ITV News
Rail Gazette
Department For Transport
ORR
RMT
Project Mapping
The Telegraph
Business Traveller
The Standard
Rail Advent
Hull Trains website
FirstGroup website
Yorkshire Post
Hull Daily Mail
Rail Tech Magazine
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Ⓒ Vanmanyo

[@Vanmanyo]

Hi all, hope you liked episode one of this new series! I just want to apologise for the class 170 and class 222 footage in the video - this was super difficult to find online and was quite a long time ago, hence the lower quality footage - I do apologise but hope you enjoyed nevertheless.

[@BewwaFrakkieAndRonRonYT970]

I feel at some point you should make a video regarding Arriva, their corruption, overcrowding and attempt at getting a monopoly over transport

[@simaesthesia]

Hull Trains are ace. They actually make it feasible to live "here" and work in London. Also I love the fact they've named all their sets after local things e.g. Joan - The Bee Lady, Amy Johnson, The Humber Bridge, William Wilberforce etc.

[@Vanmanyo]

I noticed that when I went on them on Wednesday! Nice touch indeed!

[@gwrydd]

was about to sleep then i seen you uploaded

[@aaronsmith9209]

Hull Trains have my favourite livery of any train. Walking the length of the train from the outside, it shows you everywhere it stops at with stylized pictures of the locations attractions with a rainbow like background, it feels like a great celebration of the route they serve. Also I haven't used them more than a couple times but Hull Trains seem reliable and the staff are great and friendly, second only to LNER. Also with how busy direct London to Hull services seem to be much of the time (I used it on a Sunday in February and the service was almost full out of King's Cross!), it's surprising it took an open access operator to step in to fill in the gap in services, especially with Hull being quite a sizable town.

[@Vanmanyo]

Not just a town, a whole city!

[@lewiss626]

Hull trains in my opinion is genuinely one of the best operators in the uk. Yes they don't compete with others for first class service and number of routes like LNER and Avanti but I think for all round consistency they are the best. Now they have the 800s the service is very very reliable and the staff are always great and clearly take pride in there jobs.

[@AquaValet2009]

Open access operators have been discussed for many other routes in the country, including near me, but ultimately prevented from starting up. If capacity was a concern, it is less so since covid, as we have fewer services than we once did. In the past year or so, I’ve found myself at my local intercity type station shocked by the loss of frequency

[@mrvwbug4423]

On the subject of Hull trains, I actually watched a cab ride video a couple weeks ago of the Kings Cross to Hull route on one of their 802s. The driver basically gave a detailed narration of the entire route. An even more detailed narration than the LNER cab video and right up there with one of Ben Elias's HST cab ride videos.

[@Anonymoususer_2023]

I have been on Hull Trains and to be honest they have had the best rolling stocks including the Class 180 Adelante and Class 222 Pioneers before the Class 802 Paragon IETs were built.

[@seanmawson296]

Great video, really insightful. I never knew they used to operate the 222.

[@xxxggthyf]

Non-native resident of The People's Republic of Hull here. Hull trains are the only operator I can't think of anything bad to say about. Even when things have gone disastrously wrong through no fault of their own they have always got me home. Including paying for a taxi from Doncaster to Hull in the early hours.

[@dawezer]

Another cracking video!

[@andrewgee5449]

As always a very intresting video

[@Vanmanyo]

Cheers!

[@trainman305team]

Absolutely fantastic video, nice to here the great things about Hull Trains. Maybe you could talk about Grand Unions Open access operation proposals, that’ll be interesting. Or you could talk about the Grand Central.

[@Vanmanyo]

Thank you!!!

[@danielward7935]

I live in hatfield. Im too young to have experienced the crash put i go to the school that is right next to the crash site and some of my teachers tell me stories of the horrors of the crash.

[@JBFlytography]

Hull trains 170s (170393-396) with Scotrail, instantly identifiable by the lack of First class, yellow hand rails and solid partitions instead of glass. Also, until 2018 - the buffet/onboard shop that’s now been removed.

[@simaesthesia]

It's both ironic and frustrating that Hull and Beverley get served by the best train operator in the country, Hull Trains, and the worst, TPE!!

[@ethmister]

Hull and GWR show that if First ran every toc like these, we would have a decent railway

[@quintuscrinis8032]

Perhaps, but remember that Hull tracks started as a completely independent company; while First were behing FGW and FCC.

[@ethmister]

@quintuscrinis8032 FGW where good. Thier only failure really where the 180s. The entire 180 order shouldve been instead 222s tbh.

[@oParkLikesStuff]

FCC was not good

[@ethmister]

@@oParkLikesStuff no london toc has particularly been good....

[@oParkLikesStuff]

@@ethmisterGWRs main station is in London

[@Mgameing123]

The Office of Rail & Road need to award more open access contracts where possible. Open Access Operators is the privatization that we need to keep.

[@Vanmanyo]

Only thing is that there are only a certain amount of paths available!

[@Mgameing123]

@@Vanmanyo Thats why I said where possible. But with open access demand might force the government to build more railways with the idea that it will benefit shareholders pockets.

[@ZLDSmogless]

Would you be able to make a video on the history of the SPT rail franchise and why it was absorbed into Scotrail?

[@Vanmanyo]

Perhaps!

[@AndrewG1989]

Hull Trains should still keep the Class 802 Paragons as they are excellent trains and are Bi-mode.

[@darksars3622]

"Introducing iets to hull trains that could go wrong" - famas last words of hull trains

[@mrvwbug4423]

To be fair, anything is more reliable than a Coradia haha. I'm sure Grand Central would love to get their hands on some IETs, now that the IETs are ubiquitous and extremely reliable. GC was originally going to go with MK4s pulled by class 90s, but that plain fizzled and the MK4 sets they were going to use are now in use by TfW, still in their black GC color scheme (I've even ridden on one, they are every bit as nice as the LNER MK4s). And I don't see the class 175 cousins of the 180 going back into service after TfW dumped them due to fires.

[@darksars3622]

Never have I even heard the words reliable and iet in the same sentence before

[@isnitjustkit]

Acting as if IETs aren’t perfectly reliable

[@class313]

Hull Trains 802 sets aren't IETs.

[@Vanmanyo]

Yep I do apologise for that, they're paragons I do know! I'm just so used to calling the AT300s IETs

[@BobC250]

Semantics. "Azuma", "IET", "Paragon", "Aurora" - they're all the same Class 800 train series!

[@class313]

@@BobC250 no harm in getting the right name 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@darksars3622]

YOU"LL BE GOING NOWHERE

[@poopoodealer8975]

That's what I said to Claire after I threw the TV remote at my infant son. She left anyway😂 More Toby's for me!!

[@smudgycat6750]

Hull

[@Vanmanyo]

Emotional 🥺

[@firepowerg]

'ull!

[@JackGourdon-je4ze]

only 360 likes thats sad

[@Vanmanyo]

360 people like my stuff - that's more than enough 😀

[@JackGourdon-je4ze]

@@Vanmanyo Thats okay (THE GOAT REPLIED!!!!) I love your videos the are awesome!!! IF you were to make another do one on first great western

[@Vanmanyo]

@@JackGourdon-je4ze pahah thank you!!! Messi is the real Goat of course! I do want to do FGW at one point to be honest so we'll see in the next few weeks & months 👀

[@JackGourdon-je4ze]

@@Vanmanyo I was referring to "YOU" as the goat

[@Vanmanyo]

@@JackGourdon-je4ze I appreciate that but I think Messi is the true goat here 🙏

[@peterbattey8263]

What a mess our rail transport is. When I was younger if you wanted to travel between two places it didn't matter what train or time you travelled as long as you went to that destination. TODAY?? If you want to travel to say London there are three companies, Avanti, London North Western and Chiltern. You can only travel on the one you've purchased a ticket for. You cannot travel via Avanti if you have a ticket for LNW. As long as you're travelling to London as I said you could catch either when I was younger as the railway was run under one umbrella. What a farce it is today.

[@BobC250]

Annals is a dubious term.

[@mrvwbug4423]

It seems like First Group subsidiaries must have a lot of freedom to operate without interference from on high. First Group often has a really bad reputation, look at FCC and ScotRail and their failed franchises, Avanti's terrible service reliability and their operation of Greyhound bus in the US before they sold the remains of it to Flixbus (Greyhound is probably the worst bus operator in the world, they are literally worse than the buses in places like India). But on the other hand, GWR, Hull and Lumo are also first group subsidiaries and are all very successful and considered quite good by UK rail standards.

[@katrinabryce]

GWR are reasonably good now, except when the power cables get knocked over between Paddington and Airport Junction, which happens regularly; but they were previously known as Worst Late Western.

[@isnitjustkit]

I don’t get the Sheffield proposal at all Originally, Hull had one return journey to London per day, so a new service was warranted, whereas Sheffield already has 2 per hour, it’s completely unnecessary

[@Vanmanyo]

I think it's to give intermediate stations such as Worksop a service. It'll also lead to competition as it will most likely be cheaper than EMR. It's interesting though

[@jameshodgetts7541]

@@VanmanyoI live near worksop and regularly use the station there. It hasn't had a london service for donkeys years. Its not a small town by any means, and yet only has two proper services. Leeds to lincoln or terminus to nottingham - which doesn't even run on a sunday! Both proper local services, no long distance at all. The sheer number of people that commute from that station to sheffield to get a train to anywhere else is mind boggling that it doesn't have any other services. I believe Hull trains were actually proposing a london service calling at worksop (how that would work ill never know, but it was mooted) which would have given at least some link to london. Ironically, we did have one many moons ago!

[@Snaily]

_I am a mature person and will not make the joke_

[@Vanmanyo]

We were one letter away from this video being very different...

[@euanblack6623]

300 views in 1 hour - u really fell off

[@Vanmanyo]

Fr 😖

[@DonaldTrumpIsGreat]

First Hull Trains Are Good 👍

[@poopoodealer8975]

Open access ªnªl😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Vanmanyo]

Surprisingly you're not the first to say that. I say surprisingly because if anyone else says what you say that would make me worried.