A battle is currently raging behind the scenes between a Goliath and two Davids of the train world, each trying to win over the rail regulator for the right to run new services.

Each company is competing for 14 train rolling stock, the only available sets in Britain, with which they want to run new services from Harrogate, Huddersfield, Bradford and Grimsby into the capital.

National Express East Coast (NXEC), the York-based company which is paying the Government £1.4bn to run services from Edinburgh, York and Leeds to London, is competing with Hull Trains and Grand Union, which currently runs services from Sunderland to the capital.

The latter two companies are "open access" operators, with permission to run services along the East Coast Main Line when there is spare capacity without having to pay huge fees to the Government to control the franchise.

Both Hull Trains and Grand Union have set their sights on parts of Yorkshire ill-served at present, and have identified a series of slots in the timetable when new trains can run on the main line each day.

But keen to protect its territory, NXEC has now said it wants to run new services to Harrogate, Bradford and Grimsby. It would use the same trains, formerly operating on the London to Bristol line, on which Hull Trains and Grand Union also have their eye.

The rail regulator is expected to make a decision on which company can run the new services before the end of the summer, but whatever the result it will be the people of Yorkshire who are the winners. No new train services are planned for anywhere else in the country.

Each company has slightly different plans, but each revolves around the same carriages and limited slots available on the East Coast Main Line.

National Express wants to bring forward plans to run extra trains to York and Lincoln, designed to stop at intermediate stations, in alternate hours. Currently scheduled to start in December 2010, NXEC now wants to start in December 2009 and extend the services to Harrogate and Grimsby.

Hull Trains wants to run services from Harrogate to London from December 2009 and Grimsby to London from December 2010; and increase the number of trains it runs on its core Hull to London route by two a day from 2010.

It would also build a park-and-ride station at Cattal, and introduce a road link to Wetherby, which is one of the largest towns in Britain without its own train station.

Grand Union wants to be first off the block, running trains from Bradford to London via Halifax and Pontefract from this December; and Huddersfield to London via Stockport and down the West Coast Main Line.

It also wants to run trains from Huddersfield to London via Rotherham and Sheffield from December 2009. In 2012 it wants to start services from Scarborough to London via Malton, and Grimsby to London via Scunthorpe.

Last night the managing director of Grand Union, Ian Yeowart, said: "Our plans are far more advanced than those of the other companies. They're fully developed and fully costed. They've been with the rail regulator since 2005 – we've been waiting for the availability of rolling stock since then."

The managing director of Hull Trains, Mark Leving, said his company was quite a way down the line in terms of the consultation process for the Harrogate scheme.

He added: "Hull Trains has an eight year track record as an operator on the East Coast Main Line, meanwhile National Express only picked up their contract last year."

A spokesman for NXEC, John Gelson, added: "As the franchise operator operating the bulk of services on the East Coast Main Line at the moment we believe we're best placed because we can integrate the new services easily into our timetable."