FREIGHT giant English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS) today announced it was bidding for the flagship East Coast Main Line franchise.
EWS has teamed up with Danish Railways (DSB) to put in its bid to run rail services between Scotland, York and London.
DSB will be the key stakeholder, with EWS, taking a 29.9 per cent stake in a newly formed company established by DSB to bid for the franchise.
The news came as Virgin announced it was dropping its plans to compete for the service, which is operated by York-based GNER.
Virgin was part of a consortium bidding with three other companies to run the franchise, but the consortium said it had been "unable to conclude a satisfactory framework" for its joint venture and was therefore pulling out of the Strategic Rail Authority's competitive tender process.
The other parties in the consortium were German rail company Deutsche Bahn and giant UK transport company Stagecoach, which already runs a number of passenger services.
The other companies in the bidding race are GNER and FirstGroup, which runs the TransPennine Express franchise.
Updated: 10:24 Friday, July 09, 2004
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