With Southeastern being taken over by the Operator of Last Resort due to serious fraud offences, will this have any effect on Dovetail's offering of SE-branded products? This includes: Southeastern High Speed Class 465 TS: London to Faversham High Speed TS: Sheerness Branch TS: Chatham Main Line (And Medway Valley Lines) TS: Class 465 TS: Class 465 Livery Pack TS: Class 375 Livery Pack TS: Class 375 Dark Blue Livery (Superseded) In the worst case scenario, the content could be withdrawn, like what happened to Virgin Trains, Arriva Trains Wales and CrossCountry content.
Nat already responded on another thread: no effect at all. The existing license agreement is unaffected, and the route is set in a specific time period (2018, IIRC), where the Southeastern livery is appropriate. DTG long ago realized that trying to update routes to keep up with changes after the time in which they were initially released and set is the path of madness.
What happened to CrossCountry content? I still see CrossCountry trains in real life, so why would they be withdrawn?
The license expired and Arriva refused to renew it. Same reason why Arriva Trains Wales content disappeared, and I imagine Grand Central content will go the same way in a couple of years. For Virgin, it was written into the license that it expired the day their last train ran (or the day after).
Arriva (owners of XC) had their ownership up in the air, as their owners (I believe DB(?)), had them up for sale. So generally things like that are harder to deal with. Plus DTG have a license with the DfT who will now operate SE.
They hadn't paid the Department for Transport £25 million of 'historical payment' from 2014, failed to declare it and got found out - basically it was a breach of trust. I'm not sure if it was royalties (every TOC has to pay the DfT a certain amount to run the franchise because reasons) or something else. https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2021-09-28/government-takes-over-running-southeastern-services Here's what the transport secretary said on Twitter:
That should explain it and for DTG TSW 2 code one of them was DFT Southern or Thameslink. Here's an article from the Guardian about it
Sounds familiar, similar happened here when a UK operator that was running some of Melbourne's tram and bus network collapsed and it all reverted to government.
I remember reading about that. wasn't M>tram part of national express. They had their own rail issues back home here as well (see National Express East Coast)
The money was because of a gentleman's agreement of sorts relating to High Speed 1. HS1 is owned privately, so the DfT paid Southeastern, which was meant to be given to the owners of HS1. But, of course, that didn't always happen. The lack of payment is from a few years ago - it started around 2014 and continued for around six years. Also a common misconception is that the franchise was stripped from SE. This is not true, as SE's franchise was already meant to end this year. The DfT just chose not to renew it. There is also a conspiracy that the fraud was used by the Conservatives as a tool to nationalise Southeastern without it looking like they were actually nationalising anything. Whether or not you believe this is up to you. Pessimism is realism.
Yep I deliberately didn't mention the branding - no idea if they survived or not and didn't want to give them grief.
Considering DTG already has a DFT license (LNER copyright in the title screen, whole new topic there!), I dont think this will effect much if anything.
I was trying to say that the point was that some believe the Conservatives are trying to 'cover up' the renationalisation so as not to displease the very conservative. Is this in Train Simulator or TSW? Or The Catch?
