Editing Gatwick Express (section)

===Background===
During the early 1950s, Gatwick Airport expanded substantially, leading to [[Gatwick Airport railway station|Gatwick railway station]] being rebuilt and integrated into the airport's terminal via an upper level concourse designed by [[Southern Region of British Railways|British Rail Southern Region]]. On 27 May 1958, the rebuilt station, ''Gatwick Airport'', opened with a regular train service.<ref name = "airport hist">{{cite web |url = https://www.gatwickairport.com/company/about-us/our-history.html |title = Our History |publisher = Gatwick Airport |access-date = 1 July 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title = New Southern Region Station for Gatwick Airport |magazine = Railway Magazine |date = July 1958 |pages = 489–491}}</ref> Initially, the rail service was provided entirely by standard London to [[Brighton railway station|Brighton]] stopping services; however, more trains began to call with the introduction of the summer timetable in June 1958. One of the key elements of this expanded service was the extension of [[Three Bridges railway station|Three Bridges]] to [[Bognor Regis railway station|Bognor Regis]] stopping services to start and terminate at [[London Victoria railway station|London Victoria]]. These trains would run through a reversible platform at Gatwick where a portion would detach and wait in the platform for passengers until the next up train from Bognor Regis was attached and the train would depart for Victoria. For this service [[British Rail]] used a small batch of seven [[British Rail Class 402|Class 402 2HALs]] in order to work with the trains used on the Bognor Regis services, suitable for airport link use because of their larger luggage space.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}

This situation lasted until the early 1970s when increased passenger and luggage travel to the station was rendering the old system obsolete. British Rail therefore decided to adapt a number of [[British Rail Class 423|Class 423 4VEPs]] with increased luggage capacity (at the expense of fewer second class seats) and were redesignated as [[British Rail Class 423#4Veg units|Class 427 4VEGs]]. The service however remained much the same, with the units attaching and detaching from Bognor Regis bound services running via [[Redhill railway station|Redhill]]. This led to somewhat extended journey times which meant the service lacked any real purpose, as the faster services began calling at Gatwick Airport from the early 1970s, and made the option of travelling to Gatwick from London on the service lack appeal to those who knew better. At first the service from Bognor Regis, which by this stage only stopped at [[East Croydon station|East Croydon]], was branded ''Rapid City Link''.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}

During 1975, [[BAA Limited|British Airports Authority]] airport director John Mulkern, [[British Caledonian]] Airways chairman Adam Thomson and British Rail's [[Southern Region of British Railways|Southern Region]] regional manager Bob Reid, formed the ''Gatwick Liaison Group'' to discuss matters of mutual interest. A subsidiary of this entity, the Gatwick Promotion Group, under the chairmanship of the airport's public relations manager David Hurst, was formed to market the airport. It was a long-term aim of the group to have a non-stop service between the airport and central London in order to counter the perceived distance from the capital, for both domestic and overseas passengers.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}} One of the first successes of the group was to persuade the British Rail board to redevelop Gatwick station by building a raft over the platforms, and this was opened by British Rail chairman [[Peter Parker (British businessman)|Peter Parker]] in 1980.<ref name = "rail tech">{{cite web |url = https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/gatwickairportstatio/ |title = Gatwick Airport Railway Station |website = Railway Technology |access-date = 1 July 2018}}</ref>