Talk:West Midlands Trains: Difference between revisions

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West Midlands Trains → London Northwestern & West Midlands Railways – The operator appears to have dropped the “West Midlands Trains” name, and entirely rebranded its corporate news site and changed its logo some time in April or May 2025 (April 31st–May 24th), and now uses “London Northwestern & West Midlands Railways”. MOS:AMPERSAND should kept as a legitimate part of the style of a proper noun, the ampersand is always used.

For WP:COMMONNAME, sources generally refer to WMT relative to its two brands independently, as London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway or some variant of that (e.g. BBC), although a number of railway industry media sources (e.g. RAIL) do still refer to it as West Midlands Trains.

So, given that:

1. The company is no longer called West Midlands Trains (the new nationalised rail operator is legally called WM Trains Limited)
2. The company and its predecessor has not done business as West Midlands Trains for approaching a year, and now does business as London Northwestern & West Midlands Railways
3. Reliable sources are at least split on the name so that there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used so that editors must decide the article title based on policy
4. The title “West Midlands Trains” may be confusing, and purport that the operator only operates trains in the West Midlands, or only operates West Midlands Railways trains

I believe the article should be moved to London Northwestern & West Midlands Railways

Note that if the article is moved, the lead sentence should be changed to WM Trains Limited, doing business as London Northwestern & West Midlands Railways, is a British state-owned train operating company…, and West Midlands Trains (2017–2026) should be moved back to this location as the date range is no longer needed for disambiguation. Coleisforeditor (talk) 15:07, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose to renaming West Midlands Trains (2017–2026) back to just West Midlands Trains any time soon – it will be at least five years before it stops being the common name in the real world. If you wish to pursue that idea, you will need a separate and distinct RtM. If your main proposal (to move WMT to LW&WMR] succeeds, West Midlands Trains should be a short Set index article. —𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:34, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose – the common name is either or, not both. Given both common names lead to the same entity, just have a redirect for the second common name back to here. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 16:07, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above as this change is rarely seen, and that name change occurred under the previous operator, not this one which began today. All we have is “WM Trains Limited”? The Gov press release used “West Midlands Trains“. DankJae 16:17, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per JMF. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 16:20, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as I’ve never heard WMT being referred to by the name of its two services. The linked BBC article likely references LNWR and WMR as the two services rather than the TOC as confirmed by the 2nd paragraph. But in any case, the (quiet) rebrand happened under its previous owner so this might also be a misplaced RM. JuniperChill (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Further comment The website at https://www.westmidlandsrailway.co.uk still says “West Midlands Railways” and has the diamond checkerboard logo. So the common name hasn’t changed. Likewise the website at https://www.londonnorthwesternrailway.co.uk/ still says “London Northwestern Railway” and its logo hasn’t changed. The proposal is at best wildly premature. Snow close.

𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:07, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]