National Rail is a brand name describing the passenger rail service previously provided by British Rail, the now defunct UK state-owned rail operator. The term is usually used to distinguish these services from other other rail passenger services in the UK that do not have an ex-British Rail background. This distinction is important because the National Rail services share a common ticketing structure and ticket inter-availability that does not necessarily extend to other services.
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Passenger trains on the National Rail network are operated by one of 25 privately owned Train Operating Companies (TOCs). These are:
The Association of Train Operating Companies provides a common voice for the TOCs and continues to provide some centralised co-ordination, for example the provision of a national timetable and journey planner. National Rail continues to use BR's old double-arrow logo.
All National Rail services operate over infrastructure and track owned by Network Rail (the company which replaced the bankrupt Railtrack).
British Rail's operations never stretched to Northern Ireland, which has its own rail operator in Northern Ireland Railways (NIR). As a consequence and rather oddly, NIR is not part of the National Rail network.
Several UK cities have their own metro or light rail systems, which are also not part of the National Rail Network. The best known of these is the London Underground.
Two recently built rail systems, Heathrow Express and Eurostar, are also not part of the National Rail network.
Finally there are a significant number of privately owned and/or heritage railways, as listed in the list of British heritage and private railways, which are not part of the National Rail network.
List of train operating companies from National Rail website (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/), retrieved 23rd August 2004.