How First added to their Empire!? | Western Operators #3 - Thames Trains & First Great Western Link

Hello & welcome to the 29th Failed Franchise episode and the third episode of my Western rail operators mini-series where I look at the operators of Western England. Today I will be looking at two operators of the Thames Franchise; Thames Trains and latere First Great Western Link - but should these operators be deemed as a failure? That's what I'll be trying to answer today!

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Any content featured in this video has been accredited to the correct author, where possible, with permission. However, I may sometimes mistakenly miscredit content (or label it as 'unknown' if I can't find the author), so please let me know if I have got credits wrong for authors of content featured in this video.

A huge thanks to those who have allowed me to use their footage for todays video - whom without this video would not be possible to make;
Brian Tucker Railway Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BrianTuckerRailvideos
James Underwood: https://www.youtube.com/@james143611
Mark Appleby: https://www.youtube.com/@markappleby3282
Tony: https://www.youtube.com/@Tonysrailvideos

Any views mentioned in this video are of my opinion and my opinion only. I am impartial and will never be swayed by a company to not tell the truth, however will sometimes speak from my own viewpoint. I always attempt to use sources that are from sites that I personally trust; BBC, Sky News etc. and I will always attempt to portray the whole picture of the subject in my videos. If you feel I haven't, or if I've mistakenly missed something - do let me know in the comments, on my Discord or my Twitter/Instagram & I'll be sure to look into it! Thanks for watching!

References (including accredited sources):
Wikipedia
BBC
The Guardian
Business Traveller
Daily Mail
Gazette & Herald
Hereford Times
Oxford Mail

Thumbnail Image Credit: Tutenkhamun Sleeping, 166206 at Horley.jpg, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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