Regional Railways

Upon sectorisation in 1982, three passenger sectors were created: InterCity, operating principal express services; London & South East (renamed Network SouthEast in 1986) operating commuter services in the London area, and Provincial (renamed Regional Railways in 1989) responsible for all other passenger services. In the metropolitan counties, local services were managed by the Passenger Transport Executives. ==Services==

Regional Railways inherited a diverse range of routes, comprising both express and local services. Expresses mainly ran to non-principal destinations or on less popular routes, such as Birmingham or Liverpool to Norwich, or Liverpool to , and were chiefly operated by older locomotives and second-hand InterCity coaches. Later, these services were operated by Sprinter units – mainly on express services. There were also the internal Scottish Region local services and expresses, the latter including the - push-pull service. ==Development of new rolling stock==

In the early 1980s, large numbers of first generation diesel multiple units (DMUs) and locomotive-hauled coaches were found to contain asbestos. Removing it would be a considerable cost while generating no extra revenue; coupled with the increasingly unreliable old locomotives and DMUs, this prompted BR to look for a new generation of diesel multiple units. The prototype , in service on a trial basis since 1981, was considered too expensive to be put into production, so British Rail (BR) looked elsewhere for new designs. Both of these used hydraulic transmission and were less bus-like than the Pacers. After trials, Class 150 was selected for production, entering service from 1987. Reliability was much improved by the new units, with depot visits being reduced from two or three times a week to fortnightly. although mock-ups and prototypes were built and tested in 1990 and 1991. Forty-three 3-car units were built for inner-suburban services in and around Birmingham and Manchester, including the Cross-City Line in the Birmingham area and services to the new Manchester Airport station. == Rolling stock ==

Initially, many vehicles carried standard British Rail blue livery. From 1986, Provincial adopted a version of the prototype Class 150 livery: aircraft blue over white, with a light blue stripe at waist level. All new units, plus a few existing ones, such as selected EMUs, received it. Some units and coaches received the livery with either ScotRail or Regional Railways branding. In the North West, the light blue stripe was replaced with a mid-green one on refurbishments from 1995 to 1998. The Class 158s, introduced in 1989, appeared in Express livery: dark grey window surrounds over light grey, with light and dark blue stripes at waist level. Later, Alphaline would replace the Express wording; this colour scheme was also applied to some Class 156 units around privatisation. and Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) livery for Manchester-based sets. After privatisation, many vehicles continued to carry the basic Regional Railways colour scheme, but with the addition of different branding, e.g. Central Trains. ==Split for privatisation==

As part of the process of privatisation between 1994 and 1997, Regional Railways was split into several different shadow train operating units, which later became independent train operating companies: ==References==