The UK government is to take over train operator Southeastern after a £25m breach of contract. It was discovered that LSER (owned by Govia) had failed to declare £25m in taxpayer funding since 2014 which should have been returned. The operator of last resort (OLR) will take over from October 17th.
Looking at https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/28/southeastern-trains-government-to-take-over-after-25m-agreement-breach-15327037/ Could this have an impact on licensing agreements? And others Govia franchises?
Both TS and TSW will be affected by this if the licencing becomes a problem for southeastern highspeed and other routes and Loco DLC as DTG may have to remove them, as the have in the past on TS and then release then again but unbranded, just hope it doesn't come to that.
I don't think it would affect those of us who already have the content but if they pull it from sale due to this then others will be affected. As for unbranded, that's ok for TS but DTG have already said that they won't do unbranded trains for TSW.
It will probably be the same as what DTG did with South Wales coastal, for the people that have DLC that was Southeastern could have a free update for unbranded trains
From the Southeastern website: The Government has today announced that the operation of all Southeastern services will transfer from London South Eastern Railway (LSER) to SE Trains Limited on 17th October 2021.* Our passengers will see no change in our day-to-day operations. All tickets will remain valid after transfer and new tickets can continue to be purchased in the usual way. *SE Trains Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of DfT OLR Holdings Limited (‘DOHL’), the Public Sector Owning Group with responsibility for LNER and Northern Trains Limited.
Just to expand on your response, the Operator of Last Resort steps in when a company stops running a franchise at short notice before the end of the franchise agreement, what this basically means is that everything carries on like normal just with a different operator, from a passenger point of view nothing appears to change
I don't think it will, South Eastern is basically becoming public owned a bit like ScotRail, the only difference might be parent company logos (which I don't think there any in game) will be removed. If you look at the Class 314 there are no Abellio logos on the doors because the livery is owned by the Scottish Government who licenced the livery to DTG, I expect the same will happen with South Eastern
"Operator of Last Resort" has a kind of Armageddon, End of Days feel about it. I think they might have chosen a more hopeful name for a railway operator. " Suddenly, the track ran out and there we were at the end of the line in the town of Last Resort."