
Parliamentary train
A parliamentary train was a passenger service operated in the United Kingdom to comply with the Railway Regulation Act 1844 that required train companies to provide inexpensive and basic rail transport for less affluent passengers. The act required that at least one such service per day be run on every railway route in the UK.
Such trains are no longer a legal requirement (although most franchise agreements require some less expensive trains). The term's meaning has completely changed, to describe train services that continue to be run with reduced frequency, often to the minimum required one train per week, and without specially low prices, to avoid the cost of formal closure of a route or station, retain access rights, or maintain crew training/familiarity requirements on short sections of track. Such services are sometimes called "ghost trains".[1] Sometimes even the train is omitted, with a bus operating as a cheaper-to-operate "rail replacement service" instead.[2]
Transport Act 1962 (Amendment) Act 1981
An Act to make provision with respect to experimental railway passenger services.
1981 c. 32
2 July 1981
A station may have a parliamentary service because the operating company wishes it closed, but the line is in regular use (most trains pass straight through). Examples include:
Bordesley is served by a single train on Saturdays only, however the station remains open for use when Birmingham City Football Club are playing at home when additional services call there. Operated by West Midlands Trains.
In the mid-1990s British Rail was forced to serve Smethwick West in the West Midlands for an extra 12 months after a legal blunder meant that the station had not been closed properly. One train per week each way still called at Smethwick West, even though it was only a few hundred yards from the replacement Smethwick Galton Bridge.[45]
Many least used stations are also served infrequently or irregularly.