Motorail (British Rail)

Motorail

Logo from 1966 to 1995.
A Motorail service to Scotland at Carlisle in 1988
Overview
Stations called at	28 (Not all were served in all years of operation.)
Parent company	British Rail
Dates of operation	1955–1995
Successor	1999–2005 First Great Western Night Riviera Motorail
Route map Legend This diagram is a guide: not all destinations shown were served in all years of operation. Inverness Perth Fort William Aberdeen Stirling Edinburgh Waverley Scotland England border Carlisle York Newcastle Newton-le-Willows Sheffield Birmingham (Sutton Coldfield) Worcester Shrub Hill Fishguard Harbour for ferries to Ireland Swansea Cardiff Central Bristol Temple Meads Reading London (Kensington Olympia) St Austell Dover for ferries to France Newton Abbot Brockenhurst Totnes Exeter St Davids Penzance Plymouth This diagram: view talk edit

Motorail was the brand name for British Rail's long-distance services that carried passengers and their cars. During its latter years of operation, it was grouped under the wider InterCity sector.

During June 1955, the Car-Sleeper Limited service was introduced, Britain's first scheduled long distances car-carrying service, between London and Perth. This, and other early services such as the Continental Car Sleeper, proved there was demand for such a facility between many of Britain's major cities. Accordingly, British Rail opted to invest in the expansion of its offerings in this area, launching the Motorail brand in 1966 along with the opening of a dedicated terminal at Kensington Olympia. The service continued to be expanded into the 1970s; at the peak of its operations, 100,000 passengers used Motorail annually.

Passenger numbers noticeably dropped during the 1980s; this was attributed to a myriad of factors including the expansion of Britain's motorway network, the availability of better cars, and even the provision of faster conventional passenger rail services under the Intercity brand.^[1][2][3] The wider privatisation of British Rail proved to be a fatal development for Motorail; its nature made it difficult to effectively franchise, and the downturn in passenger numbers to as low as 20,000 made it a vulnerable target to withdrawal. Despite efforts towards retention, the alleged hostility of the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising Roger Salmon to Motorail proved decisive. During May 1995, the final Motorail services were run.

During September 1999, the franchised train operator First Great Western relaunched a service from London Paddington to Penzance; however, this was withdrawn six years later.