running powers

running powers pl (plural only)

1. (rail transport, UK) Permission given in an agreement allowing one railway company to run trains over certain tracks belonging to another railway company.
   • 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 158:

     No wonder, then, that against a background of surging aggressive prosperity, South Wales built up during the last half of the nineteenth century a local railway system of great density and complexity, in which almost every company competed with every other in its area, and in which working agreements, running powers and strategic junctions ran riot across the railway map.

   • 1940 May, “The Why and the Wherefore: Running Powers”, in Railway Magazine, page 318:

     This was done, and in many cases still is done by the main-line railway groups, through the exercise of running powers, which on application to Parliament by the company using them have been granted for the express purpose of affording this access without the necessity for building independent tracks. In other cases, such running powers have been granted without recourse to Parliament, by voluntary agreement between the parties.

• trackage rights (US)

• “running powers”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.