South West Trains (SWT) is a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Stagecoach Group operating the South Western franchise.
It operates passenger services, mostly out of London Waterloo station, to the South West of London and in the counties of Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Berkshire, and Wiltshire and on the Isle of Wight. The area of operation, essentially the former South Western division of Network SouthEast, is also roughly that of the pre-1923 London and South Western Railway (excluding everything west of Exeter). The Stagecoach Group took over the franchise on the privatisation of British Rail in 1996 and retained it in 2004 and again in 2007 making it, along with First Great Western, the longest-running franchise. It is the largest passenger franchise in the UK and is a particularly complex operation due to the large number and variety of services.
Read more about South West Trains: History, Train Services, Routes, Performance, Rolling Stock Details, Criticism of South West Trains
Famous quotes containing the words south, west and/or trains:
“Indeed, I believe that in the future, when we shall have seized again, as we will seize if we are true to ourselves, our own fair part of commerce upon the sea, and when we shall have again our appropriate share of South American trade, that these railroads from St. Louis, touching deep harbors on the gulf, and communicating there with lines of steamships, shall touch the ports of South America and bring their tribute to you.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)