Low cost Blue Lumo Class 222 train at London Euston, open access operator, competing with Avanti West Coast on the Stirling route via Preston.

Lumo Class 222 train at London Euston for Stirling, showing the operator's blue West Coast Main Line livery on its new open-access service linking London with central Scotland. Lumo launched the route on 25 May 2026, adding a competitor to established intercity services on the WCML and giving passengers another option between London, the North West and Scotland. The service is designed around low-cost, single-class travel, with launch fares advertised from £29.90 between London Euston and Stirling, £23.90 between London and Preston and £14.90 between Preston and Stirling. Lumo operates four daily return services between Stirling and London, plus an additional Preston-London return, calling at points including Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Crewe, Preston, Carlisle, Lockerbie, Motherwell, Whifflet, Greenfaulds and Larbert. Five refurbished six-car Class 222 trains are being used on the route, with refreshed interiors and some new seating. The expansion has also created a new Lumo West Coast base in Preston and around 100 jobs. The photograph captures a significant change in competition on Britain's busiest intercity rail corridor: Lumo is an open-access operator running commercially alongside franchised or contracted services rather than under a Department for Transport operating contract. That contrast becomes more topical as Avanti West Coast's current contract approaches its end. The Department for Transport announced in September 2026 that Avanti's services will transfer into public ownership on 7 March 2027, ahead of wider Great British Railways reforms. Lumo therefore provides a distinctive private open-access presence on the same corridor while the structure of mainstream West Coast services changes. The blue train at Euston can illustrate rail competition, affordable fares, passenger choice, open-access operations, London-Scotland travel, Preston rail links, Class 222 rolling stock and the changing organisation of Britain's passenger railway