Department for Transport launches CrossCountry franchise consultation

Would it be worth eventually doubling up the Leicester terminators with one portion (say 3 car) continuing to somewhere like Nottingham.

At the Birmingham end, merge the ex Leicester starter with WMRs Hereford service.

With the Nottingham services via Derby, have one work as two portions, splitting at Derby with one to Nottingham and one to Sheffield or Matlock replacing an EMT local service.

Then with the franchise, provide a WMT style solution with the turbo operated services under one brand and Voyager services under another.

yorksrob said:

Thats true. I suppose it depends on whether farepayers are prepared to cough up for another new fleet.

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A new fleet could be cheaper to maintain (a lot of new trains have lower maintenance costs as they've been designed out, for instance the Desero Cities have costs of circa 2/3rds of the original version by ensuring that maintenance is easier and is required less often, also bimodals engines have longer between their maintenance shots due to being run less each day), could be cheaper to fuel (bimodals use less diesel due to being able to use electricity when under the wires, and new DMU's are likely to be lighter and more fuel efficient) and could provide more seats (so there's more scope for extra income).

As such a new fleet may cost less than the current fleet, making a new fleet more likely (or at least putting pressure for the existing fleet to be cheaper to lease, with an order of extra units to increase capacity).

Class 172 Fan said:

Would it be worth eventually doubling up the Leicester terminators with one portion (say 3 car) continuing to somewhere like Nottingham.

At the Birmingham end, merge the ex Leicester starter with WMRs Hereford service.

With the Nottingham services via Derby, have one work as two portions, splitting at Derby with one to Nottingham and one to Sheffield or Matlock replacing an EMT local service.

Then with the franchise, provide a WMT style solution with the turbo operated services under one brand and Voyager services under another.

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Agreed that given the platforms that the Hereford trains arrive on and the Leicester ones depart from (and vice versa), a Hereford to Leicester would be sensible (and also offer through journeys). Hereford, Malvern, Worcester and Droitwich to the likes of Coleshill, Nuneaton and Leicester might open up some new markets for rail, too.

That said, if you had to, you'd probably be more inclined to do it from Hereford to Nottingham via Tamworth and Derby as it in effect creates a new 'Cross Country' route. Could the Leicester portion be an extension of one of the Shrewsbury trains? That would only leave one hourly service from Shrewsbury to terminate at New Street (unless you extend it somewhere).

Bletchleyite said:

Or even a lower top speed. It occurred to me while making a journey on a Chiltern Class 168 (with an interior designed to look and feel of very high quality) that that kind of setup would suit XC much better than the Voyagers - and as Turbostars are much cheaper, they could probably have had 7 or even 8-car formations for the price of a 5-car Voyager.

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I'd say journey time is important on the core - travel between say Birmingham and Leeds remains quite slow for example despite having some sections above 100mph. Also there are sections such as York-Darlington where they need to keep up with other operators' 125mph services. So I'd say the north-eastern leg still needs 125mph stock and there has been talk of upgrading Birmingham-Bristol to take advantage of those speeds. Possibly a lower top speed would be OK for other routes.

XCTurbostar said:

There aren't any diagramed 6 car workings although I know that it does tend to happen about once every two weeks with 1P24 (LEI to BHM).
In this situation, the first unit which runs from BHM to LEI is a SSD terminator and goes back to LEI as 1K21. The second unit which runs ECS from Tyseley depot to BHM and should be a 2 coach unit (although it isnt always) this then leaves BHM as 1K23 when it arrives at LEI both units join and form 1P24 back to BHM.

Now that I'm at a computer. From the Sectional Appendix, along the Birmingham to Leicester and Nottingham routes the platform Lengths are;

Stansted Airport - P2 106m
Audley End - P1/P2 both 248m
Ely - P1/P2/P3 all 256m
March - P1/P2 both 114m
Stamford - P1/P2 both 92m
Oakham - P1 132m, P2 101m
Melton Mowbray - P1/P2 both 85m
South Wigston - P1/P2 both 100m
Narborough - P1/P2 both 100m
Hinckley - P1/P2 both 104m
Nuneaton - P6/P7 both 149m
Coleshill Parkway - P1/P2 both 125m
Water Orton - P1/P2 both 104m
Wilnecote - P1/P2 both 89m
Tamworth (High Level) - P3/P4 both 245m
Burton-on-trent - P1/P2 both 217m
Willington - P1/P2 both 81m
Spondon - P1/P2 both 72m
Long Eaton - P1/P2 both 110m
Attenborough - P1 99m, P2 97m
Beeston - P1/P2 both 142m

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So at a glance I am guessing Narborough and South Wigston are restricted to 4 cars max. Or front unit only to open if anything is booked 5 or 7 car? Can anyone confirm?

So this might prove tricky if trying to book regular working on the Leicester's as 5 or 6 cars especially if they couldn't do SDO and lock just one or two cars from opening?

edwin_m said:

I'd say journey time is important on the core - travel between say Birmingham and Leeds remains quite slow for example despite having some sections above 100mph. Also there are sections such as York-Darlington where they need to keep up with other operators' 125mph services. So I'd say the north-eastern leg still needs 125mph stock and there has been talk of upgrading Birmingham-Bristol to take advantage of those speeds. Possibly a lower top speed would be OK for other routes.

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journey time between Birmingham and Leeds is timetabled at just less than 2 hours so it gives a nice headline figure. However, when you realize that the rail journey is 114 miles and therefore the average speed of the train on the journey is less than 60 mph - suddenly this doesn't look very good at all. This route definately needs the existing 125mph sections, otherwise the overall journey time would be even worse.

And perhaps more importantly, aren’t some of the station dwells e.g. Derby and Sheffield as long as 7-8 minutes? Improved pathing would help.

4-SUB 4732 said:

And perhaps more importantly, aren’t some of the station dwells e.g. Derby and Sheffield as long as 7-8 minutes? Improved pathing would help.

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Derby generally has around 4 minuets on dwell time (which at times is needed) but the Newcastle's can have up to 12 minuets dwell. Maybe after the remodeling over the summer and the higher speed limits (up from 15 to 40 mph through platforms 1 and 2) can be used and the ease of the junction to the south of the station maybe these services could have enough time to go ahead of the EMT Sheffield at about 10 past the hour but there may be problems elsewhere which is why is has the longer wait to spread it out over the course of the journey.

Derby dwell will drop once it is done.

Don't train Crews change over at Derby as well which is booked extra time not just a regular two minutes?

pt_mad said:

Don't train Crews change over at Derby as well which is booked extra time not just a regular two minutes?

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For XC, only drivers are based at Derby there days, I can't imagine guards would change there regularly, if at all, given their depot locations; similarly I would be very surprised if they needed anything more than 2-3 minutes to relieve.

pt_mad said:

So at a glance I am guessing Narborough and South Wigston are restricted to 4 cars max. Or front unit only to open if anything is booked 5 or 7 car? Can anyone confirm?

So this might prove tricky if trying to book regular working on the Leicester's as 5 or 6 cars especially if they couldn't do SDO and lock just one or two cars from opening?

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170 SDO works by vehicle, not by unit. There is no problem at all with a 5 or even 6 car calling at a 4 car platform as the doors on the rear vehicle(s) can be deselected.

MidnightFlyer said:

For XC, only drivers are based at Derby there days, I can't imagine guards would change there regularly, if at all, given their depot locations; similarly I would be very surprised if they needed anything more than 2-3 minutes to relieve.

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No extra time above the usual dwell is diagrammed for crew changes.

4-SUB 4732 said:

And perhaps more importantly, aren’t some of the station dwells e.g. Derby and Sheffield as long as 7-8 minutes? Improved pathing would help.

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Some are long dwells, but (as we've discussed before on here) many are long because XC services are moving from one line to another and need to wait for a good path.

For example, if we talk about the "proper" XC service from Birmingham to Newcastle, the half hourly Voyager, it needs to fit around the half hourly Nottingham-bound Turbostar that leaves New Street at xx19 and xx49 that take maybe seven minutes longer to get as far as Derby. They arrive in Derby at roughly xx08 and xx40, so you might say that the Voyagers shouldn't arrive before xx15 and xx45, have a three minute dwell and be ready to leave at xx18 and xx48?

At Derby, there's two EMT Meridians to Sheffield, leaving at xx09 and xx28 (due to the lopsided nature of the EMT timetable). They take the same time to get to Sheffield as the Voyagers, so there's no time differential to worry about.

But at Sheffield you have four other services per hour to Doncaster, two slow ones at xx05 and xx30 which take forty minutes and two fast ones at xx10 and xx24 which take under half an hour. Yes, the four non-XC services from Sheffield to Doncaster run within half an hour of each other - the timetable is a real mess, but that's the kind of thing that XC have to fit in around.

OR, there's the busy line from South Kirkby Junction to Leeds - a mixture of stoppers and InterCity - six trains an hour from Wakefield Westgate into Leeds. Then you get to Leeds and find yourself fighting for York paths between all of the TPE/ Northern services heading towards Micklefield.

Any improved pathing on one section of line might only end up with a ten minute wait at the next big junction (rather than a five minute wait at two junctions). And I'm ignoring randomly timed slow freight in the above examples.

The only saving grace here is that at least Voyagers can meet the current timetable. They are fast accelerating and reliable. 222s ought to be able to do it too. But HSTs would struggle - which is why the idea of "simply give XC some HSTs from GWR/VTEC" is a non-starter - you can't rip up the timetable and start again.

Until HS2 comes along (which will take Birmingham - Leeds down to *one* hour - half the current duration), I don't see much scope for speeding up XC - its just a case of throwing more coaches at it (albeit coaches capable of fast acceleration with a good top speed, which kind of restricts it to 222s for the short/medium term).

lammergeier said:

170 SDO works by vehicle, not by unit. There is no problem at all with a 5 or even 6 car calling at a 4 car platform as the doors on the rear vehicle(s) can be deselected.

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One issue to be considered with Turbostars is that the wheelchair/cycle area is in one end car. Therefore at short platforms it may be off the end of the platform, making that station inaccessible to PRMs. If it is a pair of shorter units PRMs and cyclists wanting a short-platform station can be directed to the front unit, although I suspect some will slip through the net and result in delay and/or bad publicity.

XC have run 2 tph North of York for 16 years, with probably the most robust timetable operating in the last couple of years. Punctuality has suffered since tpe increased their services north of York partly due do their late running and partly due to the slower 185’s going in front of 125 mph voyagers which sometimes catch up the slower train before Tollerton then having to run at 100 mph to Darlington. Can someone explain why a company should be allowed to run more services when another whose services are busy have their service reduced, where does the competition privatisation brought then go.

edwin_m said:

One issue to be considered with Turbostars is that the wheelchair/cycle area is in one end car. Therefore at short platforms it may be off the end of the platform, making that station inaccessible to PRMs. If it is a pair of shorter units PRMs and cyclists wanting a short-platform station can be directed to the front unit, although I suspect some will slip through the net and result in delay and/or bad publicity.

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Thats where the guard kicks in, as she/he will know which section may become inaccessible and can direct the wheel chair user to the correct portion of the train.

daveymilo said:

Thats where the guard kicks in, as she/he will know which section may become inaccessible and can direct the wheel chair user to the correct portion of the train.

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As long as the guard isn't trapped in the other portion and the station isn't too busy for them to see who is boarding.

The DfT has missed out what I consider to be the biggets problem with CrossCountry. The lack of rolling stock and consequent short trains is awful. Compare the capacity of a Pendolino, a HST or an IC225 set to a Voyager. Simply awful.

FelixtheCat said:

The DfT has missed out what I consider to be the biggets problem with CrossCountry. The lack of rolling stock and consequent short trains is awful. Compare the capacity of a Pendolino, a HST or an IC225 set to a Voyager. Simply awful.

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The internal design of the Voyager is appalling - huge amounts of wasted space yet low capacity and almost no legroom. Only about 2/3 of most vehicles is used for passenger accommodation. Probably the worst unit design in UK history in that regard, unless anyone actually does bother adapting a Class 153 to be PRM-TSI compliant.

The Class 444 is basically the same thing as far as the passenger accommodation goes (end vehicles excepted due to being a 100mph unit) and is far better in that regard - much better capacity yet excellent legroom in all seats too.

The worst thing is that you couldn't change the Voyager layout to fix that without liberal use of the cutting torch or a *lot* of seats against blank walls.

(According to Wiki, a 444 seats *84 more people* in a far higher level of comfort than a 5 car Voyager. Even taking into account the loss of, let's say, 3 window bays from each end coach, so about 24 seats at each end of the train, that's utterly appalling - and if you crammed the 444 seats up to Voyager levels of lack of legroom you'd probably add at least another 12 or so per coach)

Bletchleyite said:

The internal design of the Voyager is appalling - huge amounts of wasted space yet low capacity and almost no legroom. Only about 2/3 of most vehicles is used for passenger accommodation. Probably the worst unit design in UK history in that regard, unless anyone actually does bother adapting a Class 153 to be PRM-TSI compliant.

The Class 444 is basically the same thing as far as the passenger accommodation goes (end vehicles excepted due to being a 100mph unit) and is far better in that regard - much better capacity yet excellent legroom in all seats too.

The worst thing is that you couldn't change the Voyager layout to fix that without liberal use of the cutting torch or a *lot* of seats against blank walls.

(According to Wiki, a 444 seats *84 more people* in a far higher level of comfort than a 5 car Voyager. Even taking into account the loss of, let's say, 3 window bays from each end coach, so about 24 seats at each end of the train, that's utterly appalling - and if you crammed the 444 seats up to Voyager levels of lack of legroom you'd probably add at least another 12 or so per coach)

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So where exactly is all the space, and why is the Voyager so much worse than other trains of the early privatisation era?

ForTheLoveOf said:

So where exactly is all the space, and why is the Voyager so much worse than other trains of the early privatisation era?

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It seems to have ended up in two main places, ignoring the end coaches which had to have shorter passenger areas due to the higher top speed - one of them is overprovision of accessible bogs (4 per 5-car train, when 2 would have been adequate plus 2 small ones with luggage space on the other side - allegedly this was due to VT's early 3-class plan) and the doors being a fair way from the vehicle ends so wasting completely the space there on equipment cupboards which could have gone somewhere else.

The overhead racks being very small (a fad on the first generation of post privatisation new stock) also doesn't help as it requires more floor level provision.

Finally, the "shop" is much bigger than the Class 444 buffet.

Comparing more like for like, though, the Class 180 seats 287 (37 more) despite being to all intents and purposes the same thing (a 5-car 23m vehicle 125mph DMU with a minibuffet) - and again in far more comfort.

Bletchleyite said:

It seems to have ended up in two main places, ignoring the end coaches which had to have shorter passenger areas due to the higher top speed - one of them is overprovision of accessible bogs (4 per 5-car train, when 2 would have been adequate plus 2 small ones with luggage space on the other side - allegedly this was due to VT's early 3-class plan) and the doors being a fair way from the vehicle ends so wasting completely the space there on equipment cupboards which could have gone somewhere else.

The overhead racks being very small (a fad on the first generation of post privatisation new stock) also doesn't help as it requires more floor level provision.

Finally, the "shop" is much bigger than the Class 444 buffet.

Comparing more like for like, though, the Class 180 seats 287 (37 more) despite being to all intents and purposes the same thing (a 5-car 23m vehicle 125mph DMU with a minibuffet) - and again in far more comfort.

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With a view to maximising the capacity of the XC Voyagers for their ~15 remaining years at a much lower cost than procuring a new fleet:

Couldn't some accessible toilets be removed, or at least changed over for non-accessible toilets?
Could the luggage racks not be changed for larger ones, enabling reduced floor level provision?
Could the ex-"Shop" baggage area not be removed and more seats installed?

I suppose fixing the issue of the oversized equipment cupboards is not something that could be easily changed at all - a lesson to future train builders I suppose!

You won't get away with removing the accessible toilets.

Bletchleyite said:

The internal design of the Voyager is appalling - huge amounts of wasted space yet low capacity and almost no legroom.

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I find the Voyagers have more leg room than the Mark 4 coaches. At 6 foot I'm not exactly short (although there are many people who will be taller than me), and so although there's lots of problems with the 22x's leg room isn't one of them.

ForTheLoveOf said:

With a view to maximising the capacity of the XC Voyagers for their ~15 remaining years at a much lower cost than procuring a new fleet:

Could the accessible toilets not be removed or at least changed over for normal toilets?
Could the luggage racks not be changed for larger ones, enabling reduced floor level provision?
Could the ex-"Shop" baggage area not be removed and more seats installed?

I suppose fixing the issue of the oversized equipment cupboards is not something that could be easily changed at all - a lesson to future train builders I suppose!

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I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of a new fleet (including maintenance) didn't work out better value than trying to refurb the 22x's, especially given that you can provide more capacity in the number of coaches if you have longer unit lengths. Especially if the new units have a better configuration of toilets and shops.

Could a 444 esq 110mph EMU have been useful for XC; probably, but only if there were more services that they could run with it.

The Ham said:

I find the Voyagers have more leg room than the Mark 4 coaches. At 6 foot I'm not exactly short (although there are many people who will be taller than me), and so although there's lots of problems with the 22x's leg room isn't one of them.

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Mk4s being cheap rubbish doesn’t impact on the problems of Voyagers

Voyager high level luggage racks are constrained by the tilt profile. Making them much larger would reduce headroom, but some modern hard case wheeled luggage won’t go in high level racks however spacious they are.

On the other hand 444s are missing certain features, there is no dedicated toilet in first class, and no space provision for a first class wheelchair passenger. Also no low level luggage storage, however people do regularly take over the bike or wheelchair spaces for luggage.

edwin_m said:

As long as the guard isn't trapped in the other portion and the station isn't too busy for them to see who is boarding.

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But if the train's at a station they're not trapped, plus they always know if a wheelchair user has boarded as they can't board themselves (well, not on a Turbostar or as far as I know any service which uses guards)

swt_passenger said:

Voyager high level luggage racks are constrained by the tilt profile.

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They're not. They are constrained by a conduit in a stupid place.

Pendolino racks, despite the much more raked profile, are large and square.

On the other hand 444s are missing certain features, there is no dedicated toilet in first class, and no space provision for a first class wheelchair passenger.

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How many would you remove to provide those - 24 perhaps?

Also no low level luggage storage, however people do regularly take over the bike or wheelchair spaces for luggage.

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That is an issue, but as the overheads are massive on Desiros it's not as much needed as on some stock if only people weren't lazy about putting stuff up and assisting others to do so. The good legroom also allows people to put smaller bags by their knees/under the seat in front if they wish. 4 seats per coach would provide one that was big enough.

This might all get you down to Class 180 type seat numbers, but nowhere near as low as the wasteful Voyager.