Why are XC allowed to continue?

[cle]

You wouldn't be stopping them at Chepstow, Lydney, Ashchurch, Coleshill would need an exact stop, Hinckley, Narborough, South Wigston, Wilnecote, Wilington and so on and so forth without spending a load on platform extensions or slowing the timetable down for SDO dwells.

Most of these places should be on more local / regional services and not XC.

And the grandad whinging on ironing board seats aside (it’s the new “60 mins without a toilet!”) - they are fine.

 

[irish_rail]

The ride is hideous, at 125mph feels like it may leave the rails. Perhaps different coaches ride differently depending on their position in the train? Also driver's seat has its own suspension?

The drivers seat has air suspension but most generally find it actually only accentuates any track defects.

 

[The Planner]

Most of these places should be on more local / regional services and not XC.

Then you are going back to the normal which TOC should run them threads.

 

[cle]

Then you are going back to the normal which TOC should run them threads.

Well for the Narborough etc stations, I think would flow into a Midlands Connect /frequency move in future, where if it doubled, the XC services would go faster (B'ham-Nuneaton-Leicester only, etc) - and these be a WMT type operator

Chepstow/Lydney - ideally one day, under a Wales operator, with faster services on XC to Birmingham/Notts, but at the moment it needs to be both. Marches, same.

 

[WAB]

Looking back on it, it really was a massive mistake giving Arriva the franchise in 2007, or at the very least not mandating a fresh order as I believe virgin were proposing, of both more voyager trains and carriages, the fleet was but about 6 years old then, indeed perhaps 'Project Thor' might have succeeded in that enviroment...

If they were now running a uniform fleet of 8 car trains (possibly bi-modes) I think they'd be doing fine. (And maybe still running to Brighton )

As it was, we got a few HSTs back again, an unbelivably shortsighted sticking plaster. Now the HSTs have been withdrawn and the Voyagers are a rather inconvinient age, too new to realisticly dispose of, too old to extend in a realistic fashion.

The service is, astonishingly, identical to the one I remember 20 years ago, usually incredibly overcrowded and quite unpleasant, whenever I've been on a voyager(or a class 170 although I find they can be more unpleasant as they vibrate a lot more) and it isn't rammed it can be quite pleasant, although that's pretty rare of an experience.

John Nelson (Bob Reid's right-hand man, Network SouthEast MD and highly influential consultant during the first 15 years of franchising) called Op Princess the "worst value for money investment in railway since British Rail embarked on its marshalling yard modernisations in the late 1950s"

 

[The Planner]

John Nelson (Bob Reid's right-hand man, Network SouthEast MD and highly influential consultant during the first 15 years of franchising) called Op Princess the "worst value for money investment in railway since British Rail embarked on its marshalling yard modernisations in the late 1950s"

Why, considering the premise unlocked loads of pent up demand by increased frequencies, the amount of rolling stock was/is still the issue.

 

[RailWonderer]

John Nelson (Bob Reid's right-hand man, Network SouthEast MD and highly influential consultant during the first 15 years of franchising) called Op Princess the "worst value for money investment in railway since British Rail embarked on its marshalling yard modernisations in the late 1950s"

He can say what he likes but the infrastructure improvements that allowed for more trains and faster journey times generated a skyrocketing demand in the late 1990s onwards. I'd say it was a great success and a key part of modernising Britain's railways.

Well for the Narborough etc stations, I think would flow into a Midlands Connect /frequency move in future, where if it doubled, the XC services would go faster (B'ham-Nuneaton-Leicester only, etc) - and these be a WMT type operator

Chepstow/Lydney - ideally one day, under a Wales operator, with faster services on XC to Birmingham/Notts, but at the moment it needs to be both. Marches, same.

And another thread of 'this operator should run them because it would be neater and tidier that way'. If TfW don't have enough units why should they run them? XC has Turbostars that TfW and WMR don't have (they might have a very few 170s left) so why should the DfT bother moving them about and rebranding them, just so another operator can run them? Logical from a branding point of view but unnecessary fuss.

 

[Topological]

Worth saying Chepstow and Lydney are served by TfW and will soon have new trains. Whether that means that CrossCountry can skip Chepstow and Lydney with every train is open to discussion.

In any case I think the problem relates more to the Voyagers and the X route that the voyagers operate.

 

[Dr Day]

at the moment it needs to be both

There were many examples of the 'intercity big train' making a few extra calls to provide a bit of extra local flow capacity at peak times (only) in BR days and it is arguably still a sensible use of capacity to use the 'big trains' to provide extra frequency at peak times to make commuting by rail more attractive. Yes random peak-only calls can get in the way of neat 'takt' clockface but can make all the difference to the viability of commuting.

Taking Cardiff-Cheltenham as an example, the hourly TfW service would probably be fine during the off peak, but the extras from XC combine to make a half hourly peak service on flows like Chepstow-Gloucester as well as providing a direct journey opportunity from these places to Birmingham a few times a day.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

There were many examples of the 'intercity big train' making a few extra calls to provide a bit of extra local flow capacity at peak times (only) in BR days and it is arguably still a sensible use of capacity to use the 'big trains' to provide extra frequency at peak times to make commuting by rail more attractive. Yes random peak-only calls can get in the way of neat 'takt' clockface but can make all the difference to the viability of commuting.

Taking Cardiff-Cheltenham as an example, the hourly TfW service would probably be fine during the off peak, but the extras from XC combine to make a half hourly peak service on flows like Chepstow-Gloucester as well as providing a direct journey opportunity from these places to Birmingham a few times a day.

Of course in BR days such trains were likely to be longer than their latter day equivalents so were better able to provide such overflow capacity. The practice of using longer-distance trains to serve smaller communities is fine so long as appropriately sized trains are used. But having spare capacity seems be anathema to the DfT/HMT (and this attitude is a wider problem in publicly funded services generally). There is just no escaping the fact that the Voyagers are woefully poor in terms of seating capacity.

 

[swt_passenger]

And another thread of 'this operator should run them because it would be neater and tidier that way'. If TfW don't have enough units why should they run them? XC has Turbostars that TfW and WMR don't have (they might have a very few 170s left) so why should the DfT bother moving them about and rebranding them, just so another operator can run them? Logical from a branding point of view but unnecessary fuss.

Since the 2006/7 changes I always thought of XC as just the main north/south network operated by Voyagers, and then the loosely connected midlands regional network operated by 170s, the bit formerly operated by Central Trains, as ‘XC-lite’.

They‘re not the same type of service, and should perhaps never have been combined. A split with some going to West Midlands or TfW, and some to the East Midlands franchises, would probably have worked just as well. If the latter could run Liverpool to Norwich, why not run Birmingham to Stansted or Nottingham as well?

But we have nearly 20 years experience of the current setup, so that is all water under the bridge. It’s probably too late to bother changing now.

 

[dk1]

Since the 2006/7 changes I always thought of XC as just the main north/south network operated by Voyagers, and then the loosely connected midlands regional network operated by 170s, the bit formerly operated by Central Trains, as ‘XC-lite’.

They‘re not the same type of service, and should perhaps never have been combined. A split with some going to West Midlands or TfW, and some to the East Midlands franchises, would probably have worked just as well. If the latter could run Liverpool to Norwich, why not run Birmingham to Stansted or Nottingham as well?

But we have nearly 20 years experience of the current setup, so that is all water under the bridge. It’s probably too late to bother changing now.

XC had to have its routes centred on Birmingham. East Midlands Trains did not have a depot on the Birmingham-Cambridge/Stansted route after the split.

 

[swt_passenger]

That

XC had to have its routes centred on Birmingham. East Midlands Trains did not have a depot on the Birmingham-Cambridge/Stansted route after the split.

That shouldn‘t have been an insurmountable problem - Central trains staff must have transferred to XC, why couldnt they have transferred to a different franchise? Academic now though.

 

[dk1]

That

That shouldn‘t have been an insurmountable problem - Central trains staff must have transferred to XC, why couldnt they have transferred to a different franchise? Academic now though.

But it was though. Staff transferring wasn’t an issue it was where the traincrew depot for each TOC was situated.

EMT had no traincrew depot on the Birmingham to Cambridge route. This is why the 22:40 Norwich-Cambridge & 06:05 Cambridge-Norwich services transferred to NXEA (now GA) as a trade off with EMT lending them a 158 for the 05:36 Norwich-Lowestoft & return each weekday as they no longer signed Cambridge-Ely and no longer had dealings with Coldham Lane depot for train maintenance as this became solely responsible for XC class 170s.

 

[Snow1964]

He can say what he likes but the infrastructure improvements that allowed for more trains and faster journey times generated a skyrocketing demand in the late 1990s onwards. I'd say it was a great success and a key part of modernising Britain's railways.

But the late 1990s were about 26 years ago. Whilst it did bring a long overdue improvement it also stopped the clock.

Some of the infrastructure improvements never happened, some of the routes were pared back, some trains were slowed down or shortened, and catering provision cut back. In last 20 years has been no improvements, just negatives so overall has gone backwards.

Operation Princess as originally conceived about 27 years ago was never delivered in full, just got the temporary transition version that was short term replacement of remaining class 47 hauled trains.

 

[GoneSouth]

Well speaking as someone who has used the services to Leeds for the past 40 years, I can honestly say having an hourly rather than completely random pattern was a game changer. And as for getting on a train with draughty MKIi coaches… it was like getting onboard something from a different century. It would be kind of fun now but they were carpetless, had bad lighting, dirt was the only thing holding the windows in, had lovely porcelain WC and pedestal basin, you could stick your head out of the window and have it chopped off, no AC, and most of the time no heating. Admittedly in latter years they used MK3 coaches but I do remember those bad old days.

You’d get a really random York to Birmingham service that served no one very well as it missed out Leeds, didn’t start at Newcastle and didn’t finish at Bristol or beyond. I remember even with so few trains a day from Birmingham to Leeds they were sometimes deserted, presumably because customers thought the service was rubbish and got in their cars instead. I’m not touting any of this as fact, just my recollection.

Princess did work, but it was not the fault of Princess that progress stopped, that lies with the franchise holders and dft. for many years I blamed Arriva but I guess they’re off the hook now DfT are making all the decisions (maybe they always were but conveniently for them they had a privately owned brand to hide behind).

 

[JonathanH]

it was not the fault of Princess that progress stopped

Arguably it is at least part of the problem, in that it was too much at once, and too focused on peripheral journeys. If growth in the core, rather than trying to run everywhere to everywhere had been the objective, it might have delivered a better outcome.

 

[The Ham]

Arguably it is at least part of the problem, in that it was too much at once, and too focused on peripheral journeys. If growth in the core, rather than trying to run everywhere to everywhere had been the objective, it might have delivered a better outcome.

Whist there's a need to provide for growth, and yes one way you could do that would be too cute off the edges. The problem with some parts of the edges is that XC provide a useful service, sometimes allowing a minimum 2tph service over routes, connecting between places which aren't easy to get between, or just being extra capacity.

Ultimately there's not be enough forward thinking to deliver the required rail service - XC having sorry trains is a symptom of this, however the rest of the industry can't cover for XC for the same reasons that there's not enough planning.

 

[The Mercian]

Of course many of these issues with XC would be moot if we did build a proper England wide HS network. But as a regular user of one of the core bits of its network (MAN to BHM) the service is frequent 2tph, reasonably reliable but horrendously overcrowded. If we had HS2 it would be better run as an inter regional service by LNWR.

 

[JonathanH]

Of course many of these issues with XC would be moot if we did build a proper England wide HS network.

Something would still be needed for the 100 years before such a network could be built. New infrastructure is also unpopular with a large part of the population, and very difficult to build through built up areas.

 

[The Mercian]

I’m as cynical as the next person about how long it would take to build an HS network but 100 years!!!

Even an X with Birmingham at the centre could surely be done quicker than that? Then again with the TCPA, The Treasury and DfT involved you may be right. Sighs……

 

[RailWonderer]

But the late 1990s were about 26 years ago. Whilst it did bring a long overdue improvement it also stopped the clock.

Some of the infrastructure improvements never happened, some of the routes were pared back, some trains were slowed down or shortened, and catering provision cut back. In last 20 years has been no improvements, just negatives so overall has gone backwards.

Operation Princess as originally conceived about 27 years ago was never delivered in full, just got the temporary transition version that was short term replacement of remaining class 47 hauled trains.

Fair point but catering was cut back because of a proliferation of urban redevelopment and catering choice. In the 90s there was barely any choice, and coffee shops were only starting to gain traction. Operation Princess wasn't as good as it could have been but rail industry veterans on here have mentioned the immense extra cost in return for only marginal time improvements 140mph would have brought. Some platforms, signalling etc weren't introduced because money had to be spent elsewhere as well.

 

[CarrotPie]

but rail industry veterans on here have mentioned the immense extra cost only marginal time improvements 140mph would have brought.

I don't follow that bit. Is there a word mising?

 

[RailWonderer]

I don't follow that bit. Is there a word mising?

Fixed*

 

[BrianW]

Most of these places should be on more local / regional services and not XC.

And the grandad whinging on ironing board seats aside (it’s the new “60 mins without a toilet!”) - they are fine.

I note this posted at 3.30 a.m.ish ... As a grandad I have as much right to whinge as any other member of society. I'm appreciative that full fare payers subsidise my 'old git's railcard' while I would appreciate a less uncomfortable ironing board of a seat, and better still a seat of any kind on XC

 

[daodao]

But as a regular user of one of the core bits of its network (MAN to BHM) the service is frequent 2tph, reasonably reliable but horrendously overcrowded. If we had HS2 it would be better run as an inter regional service by LNWR.

It doesn't need HS2 to justify LNWR running the Manchester-Birmingham segment as an inter-regional emu service. It would reduce diesel "running under the wires" and free up Voyagers for use elsewhere by XC on non-electrified lines.

 

[Nick Ashwell]

Chepstow/Lydney - ideally one day, under a Wales operator, with faster services on XC to Birmingham/Notts, but at the moment it needs to be both. Marches, same.

As a semi regular user of Chepstow to the Midlands, including Birmingham, Derby, and Nottingham, I have to question why a 5 car couldn't stop when they already do that with 5 car Turbostars first thing in the morning, without SDO and just locking out carriages, surely easier when you don't have cabs in the way?

Chepstow has been served since Central Trains days at the earliest (all I remember), cutting it's connectivity when it serves the entirety of South and East Monmouthshire to further afield seems rather odd!

 

[The exile]

There were many examples of the 'intercity big train' making a few extra calls to provide a bit of extra local flow capacity at peak times (only) in BR days and it is arguably still a sensible use of capacity to use the 'big trains' to provide extra frequency at peak times to make commuting by rail more attractive.

Some still exist - it is possible to commute from London to Keynsham and back (should anyone need to) on through trains as extra stops are made to provide commuter services to and from Bristol. Unsurprisingly, any Keynsham to London commuters have to change trains unless they work nights!

 

[The Mercian]

It doesn't need HS2 to justify LNWR running the Manchester-Birmingham segment as an inter-regional emu service. It would reduce diesel "running under the wires" and free up Voyagers for use elsewhere by XC on non-electrified lines.

I agree with this but I suppose the point I was trying to make, admittedly badly, is how good/frequent the service could be on this sector with the released capacity from HS2 both intra and inter regional. Congleton for instance is a massively underserved market.

 

[The Planner]

I agree with this but I suppose the point I was trying to make, admittedly badly, is how good/frequent the service could be on this sector with the released capacity from HS2 both intra and inter regional. Congleton for instance is a massively underserved market.

Id expect Congleton to get put in any existing Birmingham to Manchester service if a Curzon St Manchester HS2 service starts. Its frequency won't increase, as if a second Stoke Piccadilly stopper is envisaged then that eats up capacity along there.