It’s the rail operator credited with driving a shift from air to rail on the key London to Edinburgh route and it could soon be calling at Paignton & Torquay Stations.
LUMO Trains model is similar to a low-cost airline, helping reduce prices and drive passenger growth. It has already been credited with getting more people traveling between Edinburgh and London onto trains, rather than planes, and growing overall rail passenger numbers, operating alongside the state-owned LNER service.
After LUMO’s full timetable started in April 2022, rail travel overtook air travel as the preferred mode of transport for this key arterial route. Over half of the journeys between Edinburgh and London were made by rail between April and August 2022. It operates alongside the state owned LNER service, which has also seen numbers grow.
Now there are reports LUMO has asked the rail regulator to be able to operate services from London Paddington to Paignton up to five times daily, with enroute stops at Bath, Bristol Temple Meads, Taunton, Exeter St Davids and Torquay. A significant growth in the number of direct services from our bay to the capital, along with new direct links to Bristol and Bath.
The news has been welcomed by Torquay resident and former Rail Minister, Kevin Foster, who said: “This is exciting news for our bay, especially the prospect of the “LUMO” effect of more people visiting our bay and letting the train take the strain when doing so. I hope we can quickly hear further on these plans and would urge the regulator to make a quick decision on them.”
The LUMO operation is owned by First Group, which also owns GWR the main franchise holder for trains to our bay. Lumo is an “Open Access” operator, this is where a company wanting to run trains separately to the main franchise (On Network Rail owned lines) can apply for permission from the Office of Road and Rail Regulation (ORR) to do so. Such services operate on a purely commercial basis and do not receive taxpayer subsidy.
It has been indicated Open Access operations are unlikely to be included in the nationalisation of Rail Passenger Services by the current Labour Government
