More should be done to enable XC to carry more passengers to encourage modal shift

[Thunderer]

Just to answer your incorrect comment re HS2 it is NOT , repeat NOT costing 100 billion for a line from London to Brum. That is only one third of the project, albeit perhaps the most costly part but some of that is just to placate the chiltern brigade.
Also, how many times has it been said that this money CANNOT and WILL NOT be used elsewhere ? Why keep repeating falsehoods?
I thought that was the domain of Donald Trump? If you repeat something constantly it doesn`t make it true !

People saying they don`t want HS2 have no concept of what it will bring. There were similar people saying they did not want the M25 but there cannot be many people now in this country who have not used part of this motorway at some point and imagine that journey without it ?

If you research and read fiscal reports on HS2 you will see that estimated costs are now in excess of £100 BILLION - Fact, not fiction. No concept of what it will bring? A huge debt and a fast railway line between Birmingham and London, thats what it will bring (as I very much doubt the rest of it will get built anytime soon). Benefits? Don't make me laugh. Just like the DFT, please grasp the concept that not everyone wants to travel to London. Benefits? Tell that to the poor commuters in Manchester and the North, an area where some of that £100 Billion could be put to better use e.g. Increasing capacity on the Castlefield Corridor and improving many other pinch points across the country, benefiting millions of passengers every day, not spend on a vanity project so that rich business people can get to London from Birmingham 40 minutes quicker.

 

[class26]

If you research and read fiscal reports on HS2 you will see that estimated costs are now in excess of £100 BILLION - Fact, not fiction. No concept of what it will bring? A huge debt and a fast railway line between Birmingham and London, thats what it will bring (as I very much doubt the rest of it will get built anytime soon). Benefits? Don't make me laugh. Just like the DFT, please grasp the concept that not everyone wants to travel to London. Benefits? Tell that to the poor commuters in Manchester and the North, an area where some of that £100 Billion could be put to better use e.g. Increasing capacity on the Castlefield Corridor and improving many other pinch points across the country, benefiting millions of passengers every day, not spend on a vanity project so that rich business people can get to London from Birmingham 40 minutes quicker.

For crying out loud how many more times does it need stating that HS2 IS NOT about getting to Brum 40 minutes faster ?
I give up.

 

[Purple Orange]

Meanwhile the government is about to write a cheque for £330bn. I am certainly no fan of the Cummings government, but that cash (like in 2008) will be worth every penny to the economy. Can we say that about £100bn on HS2? Yes. It can stimulate the economy and enable more frequent commuter services on the existing lines, like the lines through Manchester that us commuters have to put up with.

Thunderer: strange argument you are making here... I commute in to Manchester every day for work and I use one of Piccadilly, Oxford Road and Deansgate stations frequently. Therefore I am a “poor commuter”. Frequently I also travel to London and Birmingham for work purposes. Therefore on those days I am some “rich business person”, after having been a “poor commuter” getting off a packed northern service. Where do I make that transition? Must be on the travelator down from P13 and if I opt for a pastry and coffee to take away from Carluccios, I must definitely have transitioned by that point.

 

[ian959]

The sad fact for Cross Country is that it has to fit in around everything else that in general is considered more important such as commuter services in the greater Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham areas. There are simply too many physical infrastructure issues that are not easily solvable to overcome this. Thus the only real way to improve Cross Country is to dump the existing inadequate stock and replace the Class 220/221s with 9 or 10 car Class 802s and the Class 170s with 5 car Class 802s (assuming they have similar or better acceleration characteristics). The only obvious changes to the actual routes it serves would be to dump the extremities in Scotland - Dundee and Aberdeen have plenty of services to Edinburgh as it is. The big worry is that Cross Country will end up with more beat up old HSTs, which will be no real solution to the problem.

 

[tbtc]

Do you work for National Express (or worse, the DFT) as you have a very downbeat view on what could be a fantastic service? The more you cut back to "core" routes then that makes sense that is what passengers will use the most as thats all thats on offer. Price is prohibitive to most people wanting to travel long distance on this network, forcing people to use alternatives. Then people lke yourselves and the DaFT say "no need for longer, more useful services, lets cut back to the core, run short trains, pack them in and charge them the earth" - that is not the answer for XC. This service needs to offer longer, more comfortable trains at reasonable prices to more destinations. Yes I can hear all the blinkered people saying "who's going to fund that?" - well if the DAFT can waste over £100 billion of our money building a new railway line between London and Birmingham (which most people don't want) then I'm sure that money could be better spent enhancing XC and other services, more electrification, better stations, new lines, would you not agree with that? Franchising is an outdated model and is no longer fit for purpose to run our railways, which is why its been scrutinised at the moment and alternatives being considered. Lets put the passenger first and the money grabbers 2nd for a change. Public Transport is meant to provide a decent public service as an alternative to the car, not a plaything for profiteers,

I think there’s a lot of “strawman” going on here.

Nobody is against the idea of “longer trains” / “more comfortable trains”/ electrification / “better stations” / "reasonable prices" or "putting passengers ahead of money grabbers" per se

(though "new lines" is often just an excuse to re-open some failed route to a rural village/town that is a particular obsession of a certain type of enthusiast, rather than a rational assessment of places in need of being served better).

But for all the bluff and bluster there's no getting away from the facts:

The majority of rail journeys (including a huge amount of First Class travel - i.e. the more lucrative fares that can be the difference between a service being viable or not) are to London/ from London/ wholly inside London/ via London (so not relevant to Cross Country)

1. Of the journeys outside London, most are under ninety minutes (sure, people might travel hundreds of miles for their annual holiday but most day-to-day demand is for much shorter distances)
2. There are currently a finite number of trains capable of matching Voyager timings (self powered trains with fast acceleration, capable of 125mph top speed) – you can try for the cascaded Voyagers/ Meridians – you can run “fun size” HSTs if you can get Wabtec to upgrade them – but both of these are probably a couple of years away right now - which is why I'm trying to focus Voyagers on the XC "core"
3. The current XC network interacts with lots of different TOCs and is therefore fairly limited to fixed paths (e.g. C2C/ ScotRail could potentially recast their timetable to accommodate slower trains because they have a lot more freedom, but XC are restricted)
4. There are a small number of paths through New Street that XC have to play with (currently two on the Wolverhampton corridor, four on the Tamworth corridor, two on the Nuneaton corridor, one on the Coventry corridor, one on the Solihull corridor and three on the Bromsgrove corridor) – so it becomes a Zero Sum Game (i.e. any Portsmouth - Birmingham service comes at the expense of a Southampton - Birmingham service, and a Liverpool – Bristol service would be instead of a Manchester – Bristol service).
5. Splitting/joining services works okay on “metro” networks (South Central) and on leisurely long distance services (Far North) but it’d have to be *very* carefully managed before anyone suggests something wacky like a complicated arrangement where the Bournemouth/ Portsmouth/ Brighton services join at Reading and split at Crewe to form portions for Liverpool/ Manchester/ Glasgow. I wouldn’t be confident about that working every hour.
6. Just based on the post-privatisation version of “Cross Country”, there are probably six southern destinations to serve (Cardiff/ Penzance/ Paignton/ Bournemouth/ Portsmouth/ Brighton). However I could add Newquay/ Swindon/ Ramsgate/ Paddington to that list as they have all been post privatisation destinations for XC services running south of Birmingham. To the north there are at least six routes (Liverpool/ Nottingham / Manchester/ “via Leeds”/ “via Doncaster”/ “via Wigan”, complicated by the fact that some of these services are now with other TOCs (and there are different ways of serving Aberdeen/ Edinburgh/ Glasgow to Birmingham – plus XC currently include Stansted). And some large places that were never on the XC map (Bradford, Hull - presumably there's some demand from Bradford/Hull to far flung destinations too - how many places are you trying to tie together in this messy network?).

Looking at my local station (Sheffield), the majority of Cross Country customers aren't going beyond York (to the north) and Birmingham (to the south). There is *some* demand from Sheffield to Cornwall/ Hampshire/ Aberdeenshire but that's a tiny amount of overall passengers. So, as long as Sheffield has a good service towards York and Birmingham (inc Leeds/ Doncaster/ Derby/ Chesterfield etc) the majority of passengers will still have a good service, that's the market to focus more on.

If there's a through service beyond York/Birmingham to Aberdeen/ Penzance/ Southampton then that's great but I don't think that the long distance market is significant enough to make much of a difference to whether the services through Sheffield have as a southern termini. It’s more an operational convenience.

Same will apply to other stations – e.g. the majority of Bristol passengers won’t be travelling much beyond Birmingham/ Exeter, the majority of Stoke passengers won’t be travelling much beyond Manchester/ Birmingham, the majority of Exeter passengers won’t be travelling much beyond Bristol/ Plymouth.

The way I’d approach XC is to have a half hourly service on the main routes out of Birmingham (Manchester/ Sheffield/ Reading/ Bristol) – not including the ex Central Trains routes.

Maybe even simplify things to have a half hourly Manchester – Reading corridor and a half hourly York – Bristol corridor (with various extensions to Bournemouth/ Edinburgh/ Plymouth etc).

I’m not saying “don’t have any medium/long distance services”, just that any medium/long distance services would be better if they were simpler and more reliable and focussed more resources on the busier sections (e.g. given that there are several other trains each hour from York to Newcastle/ Edinburgh).

We can’t link everywhere to everywhere (e.g. I can argue that Leeds to Birmingham warrants an hourly service but I don’t think the market for Leeds to have a daily direct service to each of Cardiff/ Penzance/ Paignton/ Bournemouth/ Portsmouth/ Brighton is large enough.

If the services (either side of Birmingham) happen to match up so that Linda in Leeds has a through train to visit Brenda in Bournemouth but no through train to visit Trevor in Truro then that’s just good luck/ bad luck. I don’t think that any one flow between places 100+ miles apart is worth worrying about.

Maybe some people will think that I’m trying to discourage people from train travel, but the opposite is true. I’m trying to encourage people to use trains by having better services over the kind of distances that most actually people travel (instead of some “nice to have” where we tie up capacity trying to link everywhere to everywhere for those once-a-year journeys).

In BR days, more of the “Cross Country” passengers were doing long distance journeys, because the irregular services were pretty useless for doing an everyday journey like Sheffield to Leeds. (which was roughly every couple of hours but not clockface, and with the complication of some “box ticking” services taking the slow route via Doncaster to get to Leeds).

Virgin changed that – they introduced simple routes, simple timetables. All of a sudden people could rely on XC, they had a straightforward half hourly service on the main corridors, you didn’t need a timetable. And the passengers used to using local TOCs suddenly found that these modern silver trains provided a much better service than before, so switched from the likes of Northern Spirit.

So if you have a plan for XC then you need to deal with the reality that most passengers are doing journeys of under ninety minutes. Maybe you’d prefer the BR days when it was a service exclusively for small numbers of longer distance passengers who had all day to wait for the one direct service between far flung cities, but we are where we are – any attempt to create the kind of “Bournemouth to Glasgow” links has to deal with the limited number of paths through Birmingham and the complications of other bottlenecks.

If you want a long distance “express” service that doesn’t bother with the “smaller” places then how are you going to serve the intermediate towns (since there probably isn’t going to be space in the timetable to run a “city only” version of XC as well as the existing one that stops at Berwick/ Darlington/ Chesterfield/ Tamworth/ Cheltenham/ Bristol Parkway etc)?

Got to deal with the reality of how things are, rather than some high minded ideal about connecting everywhere to everywhere.

If you research and read fiscal reports on HS2 you will see that estimated costs are now in excess of £100 BILLION - Fact, not fiction. No concept of what it will bring? A huge debt and a fast railway line between Birmingham and London, thats what it will bring (as I very much doubt the rest of it will get built anytime soon)

Okay, here's the deal. You can complain about HS2 only going as far as Birmingham, or you can complain about the "hundred billion" cost. Either may be valid reasons to criticise the project. But you can't take the overall cost of a project hundreds of miles long and pretend that this will only deliver the first phase (which is under half the total costs). I don't mind which side you want to attack it from, but at least be consistant, rather than trying to bolster your weak argument by having it both ways.

 

[Thunderer]

Correction, Bradford and Hull used to be on the XC map in BR days. Look at the 1987 XC Timetable and there was a morning Bradford-Paignton (The Devonian HST) and an 18:04 Bristol TM-Bradford Interchange (HST). I don't buy any of the above where people don't travel long distances, they do, but by car or coach because its cheaper and they don't want to change trains 3 or 4 times. There is nothing wrong with alternating services between Manchester and Liverpool, even if its twice a day. Yes core routes are important, but if they ran longer trains they could offer cheaper options so more people could afford to travel longer distances by train, thus attracting more passengers off the roads. The privatised railway is a joke. Its run for profit not as a proper service for people. People slate BR, but I travelled a great deal around the whole network in the 1980's and there was a far better option of services with longer trains than there is today, especially on XC routes, yes less frequent, slower, but better services with longer trains, cheaper fares and to more destinations. The railways have gone backwards since the mid 1990's.

 

[Ianno87]

Correction, Bradford and Hull used to be on the XC map in BR days. Look at the 1987 XC Timetable and there was a morning Bradford-Paignton (The Devonian HST) and an 18:04 Bristol TM-Bradford Interchange (HST). I don't buy any of the above where people don't travel long distances, they do, but by car or coach because its cheaper and they don't want to change trains 3 or 4 times. There is nothing wrong with alternating services between Manchester and Liverpool, even if its twice a day. Yes core routes are important, but if they ran longer trains they could offer cheaper options so more people could afford to travel longer distances by train, thus attracting more passengers off the roads. The privatised railway is a joke. Its run for profit not as a proper service for people. People slate BR, but I travelled a great deal around the whole network in the 1980's and there was a far better option of services with longer trains than there is today, especially on XC routes, yes less frequent, slower, but better services with longer trains, cheaper fares and to more destinations. The railways have gone backwards since the mid 1990's.

There is everything wrong with alternatimg services between Liverpool and Manchester - it means that less trains overall can run to fit different things happening in different hours.

Means that (for example) there is less capacity for short/medium distance journeys (the majority of demand) like Brum-Stafford-Crewe-Liverpool or Brum-Stoke-Manchester to save the minority of passengers the hassle of a change.

 

[Thunderer]

For crying out loud how many more times does it need stating that HS2 IS NOT about getting to Brum 40 minutes faster ?
I give up.

Well the bottom line is its exactly that, a train that gets you between 2 major cities 40 mins quicker. There is little or no benefit to anyone outside of those 2 major cities. It won't benefit anyone in Plymouth, Cardiff, York, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Carlisle - thats my point.

 

[Ianno87]

Well the bottom line is its exactly that, a train that gets you between 2 major cities 40 mins quicker. There is little or no benefit to anyone outside of those 2 major cities. It won't benefit anyone in Plymouth, Cardiff, York, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Carlisle - thats my point.

People in York, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Nottingham will all recieve clear direct benefits of the full HS2 Phase 2b.

 

[Thunderer]

There is everything wrong with alternatimg services between Liverpool and Manchester - it means that less trains overall can run to fit different things happening in different hours.

Means that (for example) there is less capacity for short/medium distance journeys (the majority of demand) like Brum-Stafford-Crewe-Liverpool or Brum-Stoke-Manchester to save the minority of passengers the hassle of a change.

If you had longer trains and not Voyagers that would not be a problem, a drop in frequency to one destination within an hour would be compensated by more capacity. So instead of 2 short XC spam cans an hour to Manchester (one from Bristol, the other from Bournemouth) one longer train could work Exeter/Bristol to Manchester and one longer train could alternate once or twice a day from Bournemouth to Liverpool. The issue is we run too many short trains, all requiring more paths.

 

[Thunderer]

People in York, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Nottingham will all recieve clear direct benefits of the full HS2 Phase 2b.

You'll be lucky. That won't get built now as the Country will be bankrupt after this virus. The only reason they are continuing with phase 1 is its too far into the project to pull out. If HS2 was still in the planning phase, it would now be scrapped. This virus will leave hundreds of millions of pounds in a black hole for the poor tax payer to pick up over the next 20 years.

 

[Ianno87]

If you had longer trains and not Voyagers that would not be a problem, a drop in frequency to one destination within an hour would be compensated by more capacity. So instead of 2 short XC spam cans an hour to Manchester (one from Bristol, the other from Bournemouth) one longer train could work Exeter/Bristol to Manchester and one longer train could alternate once or twice a day from Bournemouth to Liverpool. The issue is we run too many short trains, all requiring more paths.

So...if you drop Manchester to 1tph without doing different things each hour....which direct trains does it lose as a result? Thus defeating the entire principle of your proposal.

You've not thought this through.

You'll be lucky. That won't get built now as the Country will be bankrupt after this virus. The only reason they are continuing with phase 1 is its too far into the project to pull out. If HS2 was still in the planning phase, it would now be scrapped. This virus will leave hundreds of millions of pounds in a black hole for the poor tax payer to pick up over the next 20 years.

Or...it's exactly the sort of infrastructure to guarantee construction jobs and stimulate long term economic activity.

I don't follow the logic of "I'm opposed to it because it won't happen". Make little to no sense. Sorry.

 

[class26]

Well the bottom line is its exactly that, a train that gets you between 2 major cities 40 mins quicker. There is little or no benefit to anyone outside of those 2 major cities. It won't benefit anyone in Plymouth, Cardiff, York, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Carlisle - thats my point.

So the Brum to London services are now on HS2. That frees up paths for more trains stopping at Milton k, Rugby, Watford etc, etc so ti is FAR more than about 40 mins saved .

 

[RT4038]

If you had longer trains and not Voyagers that would not be a problem, a drop in frequency to one destination within an hour would be compensated by more capacity. So instead of 2 short XC spam cans an hour to Manchester (one from Bristol, the other from Bournemouth) one longer train could work Exeter/Bristol to Manchester and one longer train could alternate once or twice a day from Bournemouth to Liverpool. The issue is we run too many short trains, all requiring more paths.

But the increase in XC frequency is one of the reasons why there are so many extra passengers, so reducing frequency and running longer trains will put us back to square one. What is needed is extra carriages on the trains running now, and I think there are few who will disagree with this. In your rant no.22 you mention 'putting passengers first' and I would suggest that the railways can't be doing too badly with (pre-coronavirus) record numbers travelling. The network of services needs to be simple (as the recent West Midlands and Castlefield troubles have shown), rather than a spaghetti of services trying to connect everywhere with everywhere else, especially with the network as congested as it is now. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to BR 1980s levels of service.
For the small number of people travelling between far flung cities, who can't change, I suggest that these are probably better catered for by a coach service. Obviously everyone wants a through service from their starting point to their finishing point, but is not possible to cater to every passenger wish. What passengers want, and what they are prepared to pay for, is quite often poles apart.

 

[Energy]

IMO 7 car 802s would be the best for XC, we know from Avanti that 2x5 car voyagers are roughly equal to a 7 car IET. The issue for XC is overcrowding, sure on many journeys you have to change once but it allows many more places to get a frequent service.

I would avoid splitting, although it works for shorter commuter services it doesn't work that well for long distance trains as for lots of the journey you are carrying around 2 large cabs where seats can be, this is a concern for commuter services but high speed train cabs take more space, and it forces you to double ups things like trolleys. On some services splitting/joining once can work but if it is more than once then it can become confusing for passengers, if it is just 1 join/split you can just tell people to get in the back half for stations x and front half for stations y.

 

[Speed43125]

I would avoid splitting, although it works for shorter commuter services

I would refute that it works for short commuter services tbh, it's an idea that works in an empty network with no time constraints ( Far North etc), but anything that's remotely busy will struggle to reliably work around such a movement, which tends to go wrong every now and again.

On some services splitting/joining once can work but if it is more than once then it can become confusing for passengers

Absolutely. Getting on a train and being forced to get out and move to the other unit is arguably no better than changing trains, any idea of multiple services joining in Brum then splitting further north is a fantasy that will never happen and for good reason.

 

[Energy]

I would refute that it works for short commuter services tbh, it's an idea that works in an empty network with no time constraints ( Far North etc), but anything that's remotely busy will struggle to reliably work around such a movement, which tends to go wrong every now and again.

I agree, it can work for some, for example some of LNWR's services join together/split although they use 350s which seem to be quicker seperating/joining than other trains although others may want to correct me on this as I'm not too sure.

 

[Domh245]

I would refute that it works for short commuter services tbh, it's an idea that works in an empty network with no time constraints ( Far North etc), but anything that's remotely busy will struggle to reliably work around such a movement, which tends to go wrong every now and again.

Conveniently ignoring the pretty reliable Southern splitting services at both Haywards Heath and Horsham - neither of which are particularly quiet.

 

[JonathanH]

Conveniently ignoring the pretty reliable Southern splitting services at both Haywards Heath and Horsham - neither of which are particularly quiet.

Haywards Heath splitting is ceasing for a while from May this year. Both operations take about ten minutes from arrival to departure of the second portion.

 

[Domh245]

The cessation of the Haywards Heath detachment is as a result of the Gatwick Airport works rather than any long term plan to make the timetable more resilient though isn't it? And yes it takes around 10 minutes (although it's timetabled 4 minutes between arrival of second train and departure of combined train) but my point is that it's hardly something that only "works in an empty network" when they're doing it pretty successfully on the BML and wider Southern network.

 

[RT4038]

Conveniently ignoring the pretty reliable Southern splitting services at both Haywards Heath and Horsham - neither of which are particularly quiet.

This is really a 'horses for courses' activity, which will work in some instances and not others. Lets get some perspective - splitting suburban trains in Horsham is not at all like (for instance) combining Bournemouth-Birmingham and Penzance-Birmingham trains for onward transmission to Glasgow. The possibility of delay to one of the trains in the latter instance is too great. The performance of the Highland sleeper, as documented in anther thread, will testify why this is.

 

[Ianno87]

Conveniently ignoring the pretty reliable Southern splitting services at both Haywards Heath and Horsham - neither of which are particularly quiet.

Haywards Heath splitting is ceasing for a while from May this year. Both operations take about ten minutes from arrival to departure of the second portion.

The cessation of the Haywards Heath detachment is as a result of the Gatwick Airport works rather than any long term plan to make the timetable more resilient though isn't it? And yes it takes around 10 minutes (although it's timetabled 4 minutes between arrival of second train and departure of combined train) but my point is that it's hardly something that only "works in an empty network" when they're doing it pretty successfully on the BML and wider Southern network.

My prediction is that the Haywards Heath split/joins will never return, since both portions easily justify more than a a 4 car train in themselves, and the journey time benefit will be hard to row back on.

 

[JonathanH]

My prediction is that the Haywards Heath split/joins will never return, since both portions easily justify more than a a 4 car train in themselves, and the journey time benefit will be hard to row back on.

Yes, I think that is a reasonable thought - the journey time saving is something communities on both sides of Brighton have campaigned for.

The question then will be whether the Croydon remodelling allows a Victoria to Brighton train to be reintroduced in the future. It is more likely that any extra path would be used for that than allowing XC to run there.

On the point more relevant to this thread, however, at least the Haywards Heath (and Horsham) track layout with four through lines makes splitting services a fairly easy operation and one which doesn't affect the rest of the timetable disproportionately if it goes awry. That is not the same in other locations where people seem to be interested in splitting being introduced.

 

[Ianno87]

Yes, I think that is a reasonable thought - the journey time saving is something communities on both sides of Brighton have campaigned for.

The question then will be whether the Croydon remodelling allows a Victoria to Brighton train to be reintroduced in the future. It is more likely that any extra path would be used for that than allowing XC to run there.

On the point more relevant to this thread, however, at least the Haywards Heath (and Horsham) track layout with four through lines makes splitting services a fairly easy operation and one which doesn't affect the rest of the timetable disproportionately if it goes awry. That is not the same in other locations where people seem to be interested in splitting being introduced.

Not a cat in hell's chance of XC ever returning to Brighton!

 

[6Gman]

I don't buy any of the above where people don't travel long distances, they do, but by car or coach because its cheaper and they don't want to change trains 3 or 4 times.

How many journeys require one to change trains 4 times ?

Wick to Stourbridge Town I suppose . . .

 

[Esker-pades]

How many journeys require one to change trains 4 times ?

Wick to Stourbridge Town I suppose . . .

I've started a new thread on this subject:

Trivia: Railway Journeys that Require 4 or More Changes

Inspired by this comment: How many journeys require one to change trains 4 times ? Wick to Stourbridge Town I suppose . . . Restrictions: The journey must be entirely within Great Britian. No Banavie to Sospel journeys please. Please be as general as possible. For example, if Lelant Saltings...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[cle]

Always a bring back Liverpool to Poole thread, or what about Brighton XC?

Operation Princess was a great success, other than stock type/length - but fantastic from a timetabling perspective. Simple, clear, utilitarian - clock-face is best practice in The Netherlands, Switzerland and so on. The old quirky days of random BR services are brilliant in nostalgia, but not for today's railway and penetration of/competing with car use.

XC today is used for a lot of medium distance travel, and yet does need long distance capactiy too. I've always argued for three trains per hour on the main two trunks, if that X is kept.

A fast Bristol -Birmingham - Derby - Sheffield - Leeds (only) - and then two longer, slower services per hour with the more regional calls.
Similarly, Reading - Oxford - Birmingham - Stockport - Manchester per hour (only) - and then two more.

Departures out of Birmingham to Leeds and Manc at even 20 min intervals, like Euston has.

And we can debate the frequencies and extremities beyond that - but certainly Exeter, Southampton and Newcastle should have the full 2tph still.

The secondary Cardiff - Nottingham arc could be levelled up to be a third main route, but would need to drop a lot of smaller calls and be covered elsewhere. Arguably you could send it via Bristol Parkway too, integrate more into the Bristol trunk - and provide something else for the Gloucester route.

 

[Ianno87]

Always a bring back Liverpool to Poole thread, or what about Brighton XC?

Operation Princess was a great success, other than stock type/length - but fantastic from a timetabling perspective. Simple, clear, utilitarian - clock-face is best practice in The Netherlands, Switzerland and so on. The old quirky days of random BR services are brilliant in nostalgia, but not for today's railway and penetration of/competing with car use.

XC today is used for a lot of medium distance travel, and yet does need long distance capactiy too. I've always argued for three trains per hour on the main two trunks, if that X is kept.

A fast Bristol -Birmingham - Derby - Sheffield - Leeds (only) - and then two longer, slower services per hour with the more regional calls.
Similarly, Reading - Oxford - Birmingham - Stockport - Manchester per hour (only) - and then two more.

Departures out of Birmingham to Leeds and Manc at even 20 min intervals, like Euston has.

And we can debate the frequencies and extremities beyond that - but certainly Exeter, Southampton and Newcastle should have the full 2tph still.

The secondary Cardiff - Nottingham arc could be levelled up to be a third main route, but would need to drop a lot of smaller calls and be covered elsewhere. Arguably you could send it via Bristol Parkway too, integrate more into the Bristol trunk - and provide something else for the Gloucester route.

What Princess eventually settled down to was great in terms of basic hourly pattern.

The September 2002 incarnation fell into the trap of prioritizing resources to serve the marginal extremities of the network for oddball headline-grabbing through trains (at the expense of its bread and butter core capacity and reliability)