London & Continental Railways (LCR) is a railway company based in the United Kingdom.
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Created at the time of the privatisation of British Rail it bid for and won the contract from the UK government in 1996 to build and operate High Speed 1 between London and the Channel Tunnel. As part of this deal the European Passenger Services (EPS) and Union Railways sections of British Rail were handed over to LCR as well as key pieces of railway infrastructure including St Pancras railway station and Manchester International & North Pole depots.
EPS was the British arm of the joint Eurostar operation, along with SNCF and NMBS/SNCB. LCR renamed EPS as Eurostar (U.K.) Ltd. (EUKL). Union Railways had been developing plans for HS1 since before the opening of the Channel Tunnel and continued this role as part of LCR.
The original shareholders of LCR were National Express Group, Virgin Group, SBC Warburg, Bechtel and London Electric. As part of the 1996 contract LCR were to finance and construct the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) themselves, funding it from income received from the Eurostar operation.
In 1998 LCR ran into major financial difficulties and appealed to the UK government for support. It admitted that income from its share of the Eurostar operation was not at the level it expected and would therefore not be able to undertake construction of HS1. At this time the future of the high speed line looked in doubt. See here for more details.
In 2006 LCR put forward a proposal to build a domestic high speed line north of London — see High-speed rail in the United Kingdom.
The structure of LCR was complex due to numerous reorganisations. Shareholders in LCR in 2006 were:
The construction of the CTRL/High Speed 1 was project managed for LCR by RLE. Shareholders in RLE were:
From 1998, EUKL was run under a management contract by InterCapital and Regional Rail (ICRR), whose shareholders are:
In June 2009 the Department for Transport took direct ownership of LCR for a nominal price. This was possible due to the company's dependence on £5·169bn of government-guaranteed debt, and a special share that the Government had giving it a wide range of control over the business. This was part of a process to break up the organisation's current structure and sell off the separate parts as individual companies, thereby removing its monopoly of cross-channel passenger rail services and attempting to recoup some of the large amounts of government money paid to LCR since 1998. With the track and stations in separate ownership, competing services may begin. This is a similar model to that used in the rest of Great Britain and across the EU as per European Union directive 91/440. Maintenance is likely to continue to be contracted to Network Rail. Deutsche Bahn has already stated its wish to run services from Germany to London and the LCR share in the Eurostar operation is expected to be bought by SNCF, giving the French national rail company the dominant role in the operation. Following this restructuring, LCR becomes simply a property development company with sole rights to the land north of St Pancras station.[1]