On 21 Feb, 05:22, James Farrar wrote:
On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:04:36 +0000, MarkVarley - MVP

wrote:
On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:45:25 -0800 (PST), Mr Thant
wrote this gibberish:

On 20 Feb, 20:10, MarkVarley - MVP
wrote:
Is there any difference between national rail oyster PAYG routes and
london overground routes as far as touching in and out is concerned?

No.

cool

Specifically, "London Overground" is just one company that operates
"National Rail" trains.


Yes, but...

In terms of passenger facing communications TfL does refer to "London
Overground" separately from "National Rail" services - passengers who
don't know the story behind all this are thus quite entitled to think
of London Overground as being a different beast from National Rail.

I would suggest that the original poster doesn't worry about all the
details that I'm about to go into!


In terms of the arrangements London Overground is quite different from
other National Rail Train Operating Companies* - the Department for
Transport (DfT) has ceded responsibility for running the service to
TfL, and TfL has subsequently appointed a concessionaire (i.e.
operator) to run the day to day operations. Whether TfL could ever
have operated it all directly through a public-sector subsidiary
company I don't know, I suspect the deal between TfL and the DfT
doesn't allow for this though. Of course TfL has transferred
management of several stations that are shared with the Bakerloo line
over to London Underground Ltd. (LUL), so in a sense they has brought
them into direct public-sector operation.

And when the ELLX opens, the route from Dalston down to New Cross/ New
Cross Gate will not be part of the 'National Rail network' as such -
it will be (indeed already is) owned by TfL. AIUI ownership of this
stretch is actually going to stay vested in LUL, and LUL will remain
as the named "infrastructure controller" (which is an important legal
term for reasons I'm not clear about), though this is surely simply
for the sake of convenience apart from anything else - there really
isn't much point in TfL shuffling the legal ownership around between
its various subsidiary companies because after all it owns them all!


-----
* The London Overground arrangement has strong similarities to the
Merseyrail arrangement on Merseyside, where the Merseytravel PTA is
responsible for arranging a concessionaire to operate train services
on the Northern and Wirral lines there. However I understand that
under the first concession agreement the Merseytravel PTA took the
revenue risk, whilst under the current concession agreement the
concessionaire takes the revenue risk - the current concessionaire
being a Serco/NedRailways joint venture. Meanwhile on London
Overground the revenue risk is borne by TfL alone, not by the
concessionaire LOROL.