The New Southern Railway will take to the rails in Sussex in a few weeks' time as travellers say farewell to French-owned Connex.

For many commuters and travellers it will be goodbye and good riddance to Connex, a company which started off well, failed to make the right connections and ended up with an image more suited to the bad old days of British Railways.

Now the question is can NSR do any better than Connex running the South Central routes to the coast?

The company is owned by the transport giant Govia, which already has Thameslink and the Brighton and Hove Bus Company under its wing.

NSR will be with us for 20 years, having successfully wrestled the contract to run trains out of London Victoria and London Bridge, as well as the lines along the Sussex Coast from Hastings to Portsmouth, away from Connex.

It will be a separate operation to Thameslink but there will be an interplay between the two and also with the bus company. Some say it will be a monopoly but others see it as the beginning of an integrated transport system.

On the face of it, the promises of NSR, which will run the Brighton line, the Arun line through Horsham and the lines from Ashford in the east to Bournemouth in the west, look good.

It plans a multi-million pound investment in the rail network, promising new trains, more carriages, cleaner trains and further electrification.

It has also promised to look at the possibility of opening up the Lewes to Uckfield line again.

The severing of the link was probably one of the most short-sighted rail cuts imposed under the Beeching cuts of the Sixties.

It deprived Sussex of a third major rail link to the coast and has inhibited the economic growth of towns such as Isfield and Barcombe.

One of the biggest pluses of the Govia bid is the pledge to get rid of all slam-door rolling stock by 2004.

There was little to choose between the two main rival bids to run the South Central route. Both Govia and Connex pledged billion-pound investment programmes.

Connex was even more committed to opening up the Lewes to Uckfield link than Govia.

Connex had a reputation of being an extremely confrontational employer, which led to work to rules by staff and a resentment by staff to management, which spilled through to customers.

When high-profile politicians, such as Ken Livingstone, who regularly uses the line to travel to his weekend retreat in the West Hill area of Brighton, near the station, called for Connex to be stripped of its existing franchise, the writing was on the wall.

Brighton Pavilion Labour MP David Lepper, who had dealings with both Govia's Thameslink and Connex, said: "From my own experience it was clear the management of Thameslink was more willing to listen than that of Connex."

The MP, who commutes by train to and from the Commons, said the main complaint he had received from his many commuting constituents was overcrowded trains due to lack of carriages.

He wanted an assurance NSR would not concentrate entirely on its main routes to the South and would invest heavily on the East Coastway route through to Ashford, so Sussex could have better rail links through the Channel Tunnel and to the Continent.

He said: "We must also improve access for disabled people on the trains and end the humiliating way in which people in wheelchairs are put in the guard's van with their chairs chained to the floor."

The man in charge of NSR's image is Govia's group communications director, Martin Walter.

He promises change but admits it will not take place overnight.

When NSR first comes into being - Connex and Govia are working towards a date at the end of June - all existing timetables will be honoured and so will all staff contracts.

Changes will be introduced gradually.

Mr Walter said: "We are not a rocket organisation. The first thing passengers want is clean, reliable trains, which run on time."

One of the major things which will benefit Sussex customers is the ambitious Thameslink 2000 project, which will see a new station built over Blackfriars Bridge and a new road bridge at Borough Market.

The £760 million Railtrack project will see a faster Thameslink service through London, cutting out bottlenecks as trains have to cross over tracks leading into Charing Cross.

If, after the current public inquiry, the project is agreed then more trains over the river will be run. Completion is aimed for 2007/2008.

That could give Sussex a direct link to Peterborough and Cambridge, cutting up to an hour off the existing journey involving changes at London Underground and mainline stations.

The future is bright for Sussex rail services if the brother and sister act of Thameslink and NSR can get it together.