London North Eastern Railway

London North Eastern Railway (LNER) is a British train operating company that operates the InterCity East Coast franchise. LNER operates long-distance inter-city services on the East Coast Main Line, which runs from London King's Cross to North East England and Scotland. It manages 11 stations itself and its trains call at 53 stations in total.

The company is owned by the Department for Transport (DfT). LNER took over the InterCity East Coast franchise in June 2018, after the previous privately owned operator Virgin Trains East Coast returned it to the government following sustained financial difficulties. The DfT intended for the company to provide services until a new public-private partnership could be established in 2020. In July 2019, it was announced that LNER had been given a direct-award to run services beyond 28 June 2020 until 2025 making it the longest franchisee since GNER.

History
In November 2017, the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling, announced the early termination of the InterCity East Coast franchise in 2020, three years ahead of schedule, following losses on the route by operator Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC), who had been due to pay more than £2 billion in franchise premiums to the government over the last four years of its contract.

This was brought forward in February 2018 to mid-2018. The Department for Transport (DfT) decided to either negotiate a deal with VTEC to continue to run the franchise on a temporary non-profit basis while a new franchise competition was conducted, or to arrange for VTEC be taken over by the DfT's operator of last resort. On 16 May 2018 it was announced that the latter had been decided and that LNER would take over from VTEC on 24 June 2018. The DfT also announced that LNER would be the long-term brand applied to the InterCity East Coast franchise. As part of the overall strategy for the East Coast franchise, the Secretary of State for Transport stated that Great Northern services could potentially be integrated into the operation when the Thameslink Southern & Great Northern franchise expires in 2021.

LNER is the second time that a government appointed operator of last resort has taken control of the InterCity East Coast franchise; between 2009 and 2015 the franchise was operated by East Coast following National Express East Coast defaulting.

The company's name echoes that of the London and North Eastern Railway, one of the "Big Four" companies which operated between 1923 and 1948.

Services
LNER has taken over the following services from VTEC:

An expanded service to Lincoln begins on 21 October 2019 when four terminating services at Newark Northgate are extended into Lincoln. This is in addition to the sole one train per day service, which in all, will provide five out and back workings to and from London King's Cross. LNER also plans for December 2019 timetable change that a sixth return service to London from Lincoln will be introduced and 5 extra services on a Saturday will begin from 7 December 2019. LNER expects to introduce two-hourly services to Bradford and a daily service to Huddersfield in May 2020 when more Azuma trains have been introduced. The Middlesbrough service is expected to begin in December 2021 after infrastructure work required to run the service is completed.

Future destinations include a proposed service to Middlesbrough, though the Rail Minister, Jo Johnson, told Parliament that it was dependent on the Azuma's being brought into service on the ECML and other schemes in progress that would provide sufficient capacity to enable the service to run. An additional constraint is the lack of a suitably long enough platform at Middlesbrough, which would necessitate a new build at an estimated cost of £20 million.

Named trains
London North Eastern Railway operates a number of named passenger trains:

Depots
London North Eastern Railway has four main depots:
 * Bounds Green TMD, London - for heavy duty maintenance of IC225 sets
 * Neville Hill TMD, Leeds – managed by East Midlands Railway and Northern
 * Heaton TMD, Newcastle – managed by Northern
 * Craigentinny TMD, Edinburgh – for repaints and heavy duty maintenance of IC125/HST sets