Train frequency ups and downs: BR era

Been looking at timetableworld.com's WR 1965 timetable again and it really is quite staggering how poor the frequency on many lines is, compared to the 1980s for example.

While a lot of the 'Beeching' lines were still open (albeit with slow, infrequent and irregular services) it's staggering how poor many of the long distance services were. There appeared to be a clockface pattern on routes out of Paddington but with omissions in some hours, e.g. South Wales generally xx00 but one or two hours 'missing'. On the other hand London-Salisbury-Exeter was every two hours at best, with a four-hour gap in the morning and Bristol-Portsmouth, extremely irregular and infrequent. I've also seen elsewhere on this forum how poor Euston to Manchester/Liverpool was in terms of frequency, every 2 hours.

Reading's service seems incredibly poor in comparison with say 1984, with roughly one inter-city train an hour to Paddington, together with two 117 stoppers, one all to Slough and Ealing Broadway, and the other also calling at West Drayton, Hayes and Southall; but I've raised this before and apparently Reading wasn't so important in the sixties compared to subesequently.

Was the low intercity frequency a Beeching-related effect, i.e. was rail generally being run down at this time and were BR inter-city services better in say the 1948-60 period?

Moving on to an era that I remember, the BR era from 1982-95, it's possible to note certain years as having strong improvements on the Southern Region lines at least, and others being ridden with cuts. May 1985 and particularly May 1991 were bad for cuts; the latter doubtless to do with the early 90s recession though it's unclear what caused the cuts in 1985. On the other hand 1988 and 1989 showed improvements in frequency on many routes. 1992 and 1993 continued the decline and frequency only improved in 1997 under one of the earlier SWT timetables, probably due to the fact that we'd moved out of the 90s recession and demand was increasing.

Did other parts of BR show similar patterns, i.e were 1985 and 1991-93 universally years of cuts and 1988-89 universally years of improvement?

nickw1 said:

Been looking at timetableworld.com's WR 1965 timetable again and it really is quite staggering how poor the frequency on many lines is, compared to the 1980s for example.

While a lot of the 'Beeching' lines were still open (albeit with slow, infrequent and irregular services) it's staggering how poor many of the long distance services were. There appeared to be a clockface pattern on routes out of Paddington but with omissions in some hours, e.g. South Wales generally xx00 but one or two hours 'missing'. On the other hand London-Salisbury-Exeter was every two hours at best, with a four-hour gap in the morning and Bristol-Portsmouth, extremely irregular and infrequent. I've also seen elsewhere on this forum how poor Euston to Manchester/Liverpool was in terms of frequency, every 2 hours.

Reading's service seems incredibly poor in comparison with say 1984, with roughly one inter-city train an hour to Paddington, together with two 117 stoppers, one all to Slough and Ealing Broadway, and the other also calling at West Drayton, Hayes and Southall; but I've raised this before and apparently Reading wasn't so important in the sixties compared to subesequently.

Was the low intercity frequency a Beeching-related effect, i.e. was rail generally being run down at this time and were BR inter-city services better in say the 1948-60 period?

Moving on to an era that I remember, the BR era from 1982-95, it's possible to note certain years as having strong improvements on the Southern Region lines at least, and others being ridden with cuts. May 1985 and particularly May 1991 were bad for cuts; the latter doubtless to do with the early 90s recession though it's unclear what caused the cuts in 1985. On the other hand 1988 and 1989 showed improvements in frequency on many routes. 1992 and 1993 continued the decline and frequency only improved in 1997 under one of the earlier SWT timetables, probably due to the fact that we'd moved out of the 90s recession and demand was increasing.

Did other parts of BR show similar patterns, i.e were 1985 and 1991-93 universally years of cuts and 1988-89 universally years of improvement?

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Looking at my older timetables I would say simply that the frequency was almost always poorer in the 1960s, the launch of InterCity brought more frequent services on most of the mainlines, though in many cases still not hourly on major routes.

The next improvements generally seem to be with the launch of the 125s, Edinburgh went to properly hourly then.

I haven't noticed any decreases in frequency generally through the 1980s/90s on mainlines just generally tweaking of calling patterns and journey times.

nickw1 said:

Been looking at timetableworld.com's WR 1965 timetable again and it really is quite staggering how poor the frequency on many lines is, compared to the 1980s for example.

While a lot of the 'Beeching' lines were still open (albeit with slow, infrequent and irregular services) it's staggering how poor many of the long distance services were. ...

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Yes. Because a) people simply didn't travel so much on a normal day-to-day basis
and b) using steam traction, the relative cost (versus the overhead costs) of running a train was high, especially an express, so you only ran a fairly minimal service and boosted it at holiday times, peak periods etc with specials and reliefs.

nickw1 said:

There appeared to be a clockface pattern on routes out of Paddington but with omissions in some hours, e.g. South Wales generally xx00 but one or two hours 'missing'.

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My memory is that the WR (along with the GN) was one of the first to make the move towards the Inter-City concept in practice. That is to say, easy to understand, clock-face timetable plus high-speed (for the period) service more or less throughout the day. If some trains ran a bit empty, that was part of the package (a kind of loss-leader) designed to get the long-distance passenger out of the car. Even if the passenger usually caught the 18.00 departure and not the 19.00, they knew there was a 19.00 still there as a back up if things went wrong.

In part, BR could afford this because the relative cost of running diesels (and especially electrics) was lower (compared to the total investment - which was higher than with steam - and in the case of electric, much much higher.)

nickw1 said:

On the other hand London-Salisbury-Exeter was every two hours at best, with a four-hour gap in the morning and Bristol-Portsmouth, extremely irregular and infrequent. I've also seen elsewhere on this forum how poor Euston to Manchester/Liverpool was in terms of frequency, every 2 hours.

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The LSWR route was down for closure west of Yeovil Jcn/Sherborne, if not Salisbury. I think it was touch and go if it would survive. Once the decision was made to make Paddington THE station for Exeter and beyond, it had to find traffic between Pinhoe and Salisbury to justify its continued existence. But, interestingly, even though its service was not fast, the fact that it was clock-face, served London and - having got Class 33s rather than Warships - traffic built up. (The poor class 33s, having less power, were SLOWER than Warships, but more reliable.)

nickw1 said:

Reading's service seems incredibly poor in comparison with say 1984, with roughly one inter-city train an hour to Paddington, together with two 117 stoppers, one all to Slough and Ealing Broadway, and the other also calling at West Drayton, Hayes and Southall; but I've raised this before and apparently Reading wasn't so important in the sixties compared to subesequently.

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Nowhere was as important as subsequently, IYSWIM. The introduction of HSTs on the WR in 1976 had a sparks+ effect - even with no wires!

nickw1 said:

Was the low intercity frequency a Beeching-related effect, i.e. was rail generally being run down at this time and were BR inter-city services better in say the 1948-60 period?

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NO! Not at all. On the contrary, in fact. Beeching was all for Inter-City (between the right cities, that is). After the war, the railways took a long time to recover and catch up with delayed maintenance of track, signalling and rolling stock. The concept was often to have one 'crack express' for the businessman up to London in the morning and back at 17.00 or so, with some fillers in between, as required by regular traffic demand. Of course, major routes, eg London-Scotland and London-Birmingham-Wolves, did better than others, and a had a few 'crack' trains each day.

And, to repeat - neither the businessman nor the regular public travelled anything like as much as they did by 1984, let alone today.

The frequencies in the 60s were typical for the time, and for a long time before that.

The service changes on NSE in the 90s were due to a combination of the recession, and Government not giving BR any cash to fill the shortfall caused by the drop in traffic. There was some serious chopping of services (frequencies, lengths, even operating hours) to balance the books. All but the most essential maintenance and renewals was chopped too. Just about the only investment that made it through unscathed was the upgrades for the channel tunnel. Also fares went up at a rate a long way ahead of inflation - nearly 40 % above inflation between 1984-1994.

The chopping of services led, indirectly, to the tight specification of services seen in franchises to this day.

I’m always astonished at the infrequency if services in most previous decades and on many routes, compared with today. It’s often missed by people. It really is astonishing how many more services there are today compared with 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

alistairlees said:

I’m always astonished at the infrequency if services in most previous decades and on many routes, compared with today. It’s often missed by people. It really is astonishing how many more services there are today compared with 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

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What is often forgotten is that BR had a fairly free hand in what it could do as well. Various routes lost Sunday services for example when money got tight. Frequencies would fall. Nothing government could do about it except have a moan. BR would also experiment - put on a new service pattern, give it s year or two, and if it didn’t make money (it was all about money then), it would be stopped. Corby is the best example. This can’t happen now.

There were service cuts in the recession of the early 1980s as well as a general tightening up of timetables, i.e. quicker turnarounds at London stations. This is one of the things that helped allow the cascade of ultimately 9 WR HST sets to the Midland Mainline to replace the majority of peak loco-hauled workings.

There were also cutbacks in the recession of the early 1990s, including formation changes. For example, a lot of West Coast services had gone to DVT-2xFO-RFM-6xTSO Mk 3 formations but many were reduced back to 5xTSO as other reformations also saw the Super Pullman formations disbanded. This helped allow a cascade of Mk 2F vehicles to Anglia and some Mk 3 RFMs.

InterCity West Coast for example also had some sets of relief stock in 1990 that had gone in a couple of years. Yes - the days when on a Bank Holiday relief trains ran are long gone.

The cutbacks in the early 1990s then the move towards privatisation meant that as demand started to rise their wasn't the capacity to add back in with spare stock nor new trains coming in (initially).

Just a few extra points:

The period 1955-65 saw significant improvements on lots of routes, but by no means all (the WCML in particular had to wait till the wires were up).

The Southern electric and diesel routes (the area I know best) were at full pre-WW2 levels and more - but were then slimmed down as car became the preferred mode in rural Kent and Sussex (stopping services in particular) and the new dormitories of Longfield, Staplehurst, Fleet etc took time to develop.

Further afield, there were plenty of areas where dmus on regular interval timings had made a considerable improvement (but not always profitsbly).

Reading has been mentioned - back in the 60s relatively few class 1 trains stopped there (and Slough had quite a few) because it wasn't a significant destination (nor, I think, a favoured residence for London season-ticket holders - I deliberately avoid the word commuters! - who preferred Henley or Goring or...).
It isn't unique, but Milton Keynes and Peterborough were "planned" growth and I think the nearest recent equivalent would be the Warwick area (and that depended on the M40 first not Chiltern).

All that is an over simplification, of course.

Been thinking <dangerous> about this thread, and thought to add a couple of points. 30907 revives the subject of Reading, and I think it is true to say that since 1965 Reading services have indeed developed at a rate far in excess of "average" (if such a thing exists), certainly, say, compared to Luton - a town not dissimilar in some ways.

Some of the factors involved include the rail-air connection to LHR (which was originally started at Slough), the general downgrading of Slough as an Inter-City station outside London (displaced by Reading) and the growing importance of XC traffic via Basingstoke to Southampton/Bournemouth. The latter line in the 60s was more or less a branch in terms of passenger traffic, with only one "Inter-City" train a day for much of the year - The Pines Express - granted with a flurry of extras in the summer holiday period.

Another thing about those years was the perceived "length of the travelling day" . ITWF that up to 1960, very few "Inter-City" workings left London before 08.00 and even in 1965, as I remember it, management thought the earliest you could expect folk to get up and leave London was 07.45. (Perhaps the OP could check for the first working out of Paddington that year. Perhaps there was something around 07.15 to Bristol or S Wales by then? )

In the up direction, it was a bit earlier, but - for example - I think the normal departure for the flagship Midland Pullman from Manchester Central was 07.20 till the end of its day in 1966.

Against this, of course, you did have many more sleeper services, so I presume a fair few business folk took eg "The Red Rose" from Liverpool at a relatively civilised departure hour for London, had their meetings in the afternoon, dinner with claret in the evening and then took the sleeper back overnight. (I originally typed out "Red Dragon" from Cardiff to London - but I don't know if there was an overnight sleeper from Paddington to S Wales?)

Finally - and this could be a subject for another thread I suppose - in contrast to Reading's "super development" as a traffic centre, I think some places have probably dropped off (in relative terms). One that springs to mind is Rugby, which IRCC used to have an eclectic mix of "inter-City" services including the odd Glasgow train.

Of course, Rugby today gets more trains in absolute terms than in the 60s, but its role as a traffic hub (for Northampton and stations south) has largely been displaced by Milton Keynes.

Reading's growth as a business centre really started with the building of the M4 which reached Maidenhead in the mid 1960s and was completed past Reading in, IIRC, 1970 or 1971. Companies based overseas found Reading a convenient place to site offices which were only half an hour or forty minute car drive from Heathrow and land and house prices were a lot lower than places closer to London.

Then came a lot of housing development especially in Lower Earley and the rest, as they say, is history.

70014IronDuke said:

Against this, of course, you did have many more sleeper services, so I presume a fair few business folk took eg "The Red Rose" from Liverpool at a relatively civilised departure hour for London, had their meetings in the afternoon, dinner with claret in the evening and then took the sleeper back overnight.

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To be pedantic, the Red Rose left Liverpool around 1730. The morning up trains were the Shamrock at 08ish and the Merseyside Express at 10ish. The last down train was about 1800. Before 1966 a round trip would take about 7 hours, even longer at the height of the electrification work, and only give you six hours or so in London.

Bald Rick said:

What is often forgotten is that BR had a fairly free hand in what it could do as well. Various routes lost Sunday services for example when money got tight. Frequencies would fall. Nothing government could do about it except have a moan. BR would also experiment - put on a new service pattern, give it s year or two, and if it didn’t make money (it was all about money then), it would be stopped. Corby is the best example. This can’t happen now.

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Yes, very much so - about all BR couldn't do (without ministerial approval) was remove passenger services altogether. The 'Speller Amendment' legislation in 1981 allowed experimental passenger re-openings (for up to a 5 year trial period) without having to go through formal closure proceedings to withdraw them if they weren't successful/ongoing subsidy wasn't available.

Sunday services in particular could be very sparse or non-existent years ago, particularly before lunchtime - even large, important stations could be very quiet on a Sunday morning. General Sunday shop opening was illegal prior to 1994 in England and Wales...

The WR had long (in fact back to GWR days) standardised (somewhat) on departure times from Paddington, 30 past to the West of England for example, 55 past to South Wales, but a varied stopping pattern and not every hour led to this disappearing down the line, and the Up services were never so well arranged.

It is true that a key rail development has been progression, from a fixed "this is the best train", through regular intervals, and then real Turn Up And Go, even on long distance routes like London to Manchester or Leeds. The only negative here is the commercial arrangements have gone the opposite way, with fares either for fixed departures or at ludicrous Anytime levels which I believe few actually pay. What's the point of a Metro-style service if you have to get to the start point way beforehand to be sure of getting your allotted service.

Beeching (and his operating ally Gerry Fiennes) were great supporters of fast, regular long distance services, and between them they got the government to make all the investment at Derby for Mk 2 stock volume production to handle this.

Aside from all this, there have been some notable service shrinks as well over this time. The Watford DC line must be one of the worst, where it had combined BR and Bakerloo trains literally every couple of minutes, this has shrunk right back to 15-20 minute intervals. Strangely, the pretty much parallel North London line has gone the opposite way. Liverpool Street to Enfield and Chingford has done much the same at peak periods.

Taunton said:

Liverpool Street to Enfield and Chingford has done much the same at peak periods.

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The Victoria line had quite a lot to do with that.

oldman said:

To be pedantic, the Red Rose left Liverpool around 1730. The morning up trains were the Shamrock at 08ish and the Merseyside Express at 10ish. The last down train was about 1800. Before 1966 a round trip would take about 7 hours, even longer at the height of the electrification work, and only give you six hours or so in London.

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Not at all. Thank you for the correction. I had assumed, as you realised, that the RR was the opposite kind of working. (IT wasn't conscious at the time, but I have an image of a Princess pacific in Edge Hill cutting with the sun on the smokebox, and I would guess that would mean a sort of 10.00 ish departure time in summer. But I must be wrong.)

Was The Shamrock timed to pick up passengers from an overnight boat arrival?

Taunton said:

The WR had long (in fact back to GWR days) standardised (somewhat) on departure times from Paddington, 30 past to the West of England for example, 55 past to South Wales, but a varied stopping pattern and not every hour led to this disappearing down the line, and the Up services were never so well arranged. ...

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xx.55 to South Wales is interesting. Did the Bristols leave on the hour?
When did the S Wales switch to xx.00? - I know they were on the hour by the mid-70s, and assumed that meant they formed the most esteemed service.

EDIT - Having just re-read the OP again, it's clear the SW trains were already xx.00 in 1965.

70014IronDuke said:

Another thing about those years was the perceived "length of the travelling day" . ITWF that up to 1960, very few "Inter-City" workings left London before 08.00 and even in 1965, as I remember it, management thought the earliest you could expect folk to get up and leave London was 07.45. (Perhaps the OP could check for the first working out of Paddington that year. Perhaps there was something around 07.15 to Bristol or S Wales by then? )

In the up direction, it was a bit earlier, but - for example - I think the normal departure for the flagship Midland Pullman from Manchester Central was 07.20 till the end of its day in 1966.

Against this, of course, you did have many more sleeper services, so I presume a fair few business folk took eg "The Red Rose" from Liverpool at a relatively civilised departure hour for London, had their meetings in the afternoon, dinner with claret in the evening and then took the sleeper back overnight. (I originally typed out "Red Dragon" from Cardiff to London - but I don't know if there was an overnight sleeper from Paddington to S Wales?)

Finally - and this could be a subject for another thread I suppose - in contrast to Reading's "super development" as a traffic centre, I think some places have probably dropped off (in relative terms). One that springs to mind is Rugby, which IRCC used to have an eclectic mix of "inter-City" services including the odd Glasgow train.

Of course, Rugby today gets more trains in absolute terms than in the 60s, but its role as a traffic hub (for Northampton and stations south) has largely been displaced by Milton Keynes.

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Social behaviours were a lot different then to now. There was not all this travelling around the country for meetings like there is today - overall journey times simply precluded it. Those that did would have stayed overnight in a 'commercial hotel' or in their club (if in London) Self respecting businessmen did not rise much before 6am, so running very early trains was not going to be profitable. They may have returned on the sleeper, but more likely stayed in their club in London and returned the next evening on the 'businessman's' train.

Rugby only really got the service it did for historical reasons - engines ere changed there and. more importantly, a refreshment stop. Its importance as a passenger interchange point had long since gone. The various minor lines radiating from Rugby carried few passengers. Northampton had a selection of main line trains stopping there prior to electrification. I expect parcels and mail traffic, plus an inertia to change, were the main reasons for its exaggerated service by 1960.

70014IronDuke said:

xx.55 to South Wales is interesting. Did the Bristols leave on the hour?
When did the S Wales switch to xx.00? - I know they were on the hour by the mid-70s, and assumed that meant they formed the most esteemed service.

EDIT - Having just re-read the OP again, it's clear the SW trains were already xx.00 in 1965.

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I don't know when they changed. If you go back to the 1949 timetable on the same site (which will be pretty much unchanged since GWR days) the South Wales expresses were at 55, so presumably some time between the two.

Was The Shamrock timed to pick up passengers from an overnight boat arrival?

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Yes, the Dublin to Liverpool and Belfast to Liverpool overnight boats both got in at about 6.30am. Liverpool Corporation buses were hired to do the mile or two between their docks and Lime Street. They were a regular feature of the station in the evening as well for the reverse, lined up on the road entrance by the high numbered platforms, which were (and still are) the London service ones.

Another thing about those years was the perceived "length of the travelling day" . ITWF that up to 1960, very few "Inter-City" workings left London before 08.00 and even in 1965, as I remember it, management thought the earliest you could expect folk to get up and leave London was 07.45. (Perhaps the OP could check for the first working out of Paddington that year. Perhaps there was something around 07.15 to Bristol or S Wales by then? )

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Oh no! There was a longstanding 05.30 from Paddington to Bristol, and thence Plymouth (going the "old way", so with a W of E xx.30 departure time), which did quite a lot of early work along the line. I used to see it most days at Bristol TM when heading to school there, and it was still the first "proper" train of the day west from Taunton. It was always a big train, with several mail vans as well, and one of the last King workings on the W of E into 1962.

I think your typical businessman pre Inter City had a meeting booked for 2pm, possibly with luncheon first, finishing at 5 or so in time for dinner on the train home. IIRC trains like the Silver Jubilee were rather late for breakfast.....

I think recent decades have seen the rest of the railway attempt to emulate the success of frequent interval services developed by the Southern Railway/Region.

A lot of suburban lines from Waterloo had 20 minute interval services in the 1950's/60's which were reduced to half hourly in the 70's/80's.

70014IronDuke said:

Been thinking <dangerous> about this thread, and thought to add a couple of points. 30907 revives the subject of Reading, and I think it is true to say that since 1965 Reading services have indeed developed at a rate far in excess of "average" (if such a thing exists), certainly, say, compared to Luton - a town not dissimilar in some ways.

Some of the factors involved include the rail-air connection to LHR (which was originally started at Slough), the general downgrading of Slough as an Inter-City station outside London (displaced by Reading) and the growing importance of XC traffic via Basingstoke to Southampton/Bournemouth. The latter line in the 60s was more or less a branch in terms of passenger traffic, with only one "Inter-City" train a day for much of the year - The Pines Express - granted with a flurry of extras in the summer holiday period.

Another thing about those years was the perceived "length of the travelling day" . ITWF that up to 1960, very few "Inter-City" workings left London before 08.00 and even in 1965, as I remember it, management thought the earliest you could expect folk to get up and leave London was 07.45. (Perhaps the OP could check for the first working out of Paddington that year. Perhaps there was something around 07.15 to Bristol or S Wales by then? )

In the up direction, it was a bit earlier, but - for example - I think the normal departure for the flagship Midland Pullman from Manchester Central was 07.20 till the end of its day in 1966.

Against this, of course, you did have many more sleeper services, so I presume a fair few business folk took eg "The Red Rose" from Liverpool at a relatively civilised departure hour for London, had their meetings in the afternoon, dinner with claret in the evening and then took the sleeper back overnight. (I originally typed out "Red Dragon" from Cardiff to London - but I don't know if there was an overnight sleeper from Paddington to S Wales?)

Finally - and this could be a subject for another thread I suppose - in contrast to Reading's "super development" as a traffic centre, I think some places have probably dropped off (in relative terms). One that springs to mind is Rugby, which IRCC used to have an eclectic mix of "inter-City" services including the odd Glasgow train.

Of course, Rugby today gets more trains in absolute terms than in the 60s, but its role as a traffic hub (for Northampton and stations south) has largely been displaced by Milton Keynes.

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I've got the 1959 timetable and it does say there was a sleeper train from Paddington to South Wales. 9.30pm SO to Carmarthen. 1am SX Paddington to Carmarthen. Sleeper trains are also shown as running from Paddington to Penzance and also to Birkenhead Woodside.

Sprinter107 said:

I've got the 1959 timetable and it does say there was a sleeper train from Paddington to South Wales. 9.30pm SO to Carmarthen. 1am SX Paddington to Carmarthen. Sleeper trains are also shown as running from Paddington to Penzance and also to Birkenhead Woodside.

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It went to Milford Haven for some time too. Via Gloucester I think. I’ll look later.

70014IronDuke said:

Been thinking <dangerous> about this thread, and thought to add a couple of points. 30907 revives the subject of Reading, and I think it is true to say that since 1965 Reading services have indeed developed at a rate far in excess of "average" (if such a thing exists), certainly, say, compared to Luton - a town not dissimilar in some ways.

Some of the factors involved include the rail-air connection to LHR (which was originally started at Slough), the general downgrading of Slough as an Inter-City station outside London (displaced by Reading) and the growing importance of XC traffic via Basingstoke to Southampton/Bournemouth. The latter line in the 60s was more or less a branch in terms of passenger traffic, with only one "Inter-City" train a day for much of the year - The Pines Express - granted with a flurry of extras in the summer holiday period.

Another thing about those years was the perceived "length of the travelling day" . ITWF that up to 1960, very few "Inter-City" workings left London before 08.00 and even in 1965, as I remember it, management thought the earliest you could expect folk to get up and leave London was 07.45. (Perhaps the OP could check for the first working out of Paddington that year. Perhaps there was something around 07.15 to Bristol or S Wales by then? )

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Looks like the first Bristol was as early as 0530, though the first South Wales was 0800.

Devon and Cornwall were xx30 alternate hours - this was the one main route that I didn't mention in my original post.

By 1983/84 (I mention this as this was the first GW timetable I have memory of, mostly through days spent at Reading in 1984), the South Wales remained at xx00, Devon and Cornwall had moved to xx45 out of Paddington which presumably meant Bristol services then switched to some other point in the hour - ISTR it was xx15 though I can't remember for sure.

Even by 1984, the Oxford fasts, unlike the other main lines and indeed the stoppers, hadn't moved to clock-face yet, ISTR they were roughly hourly calling at Reading only, and formed of 50s or 47s with often Mk-I stock and the occasional HST (presumably filling in between peaks), but they didn't depart at the exact same time every hour. Perhaps around xx40 to xx50 out of Reading? ... just behind the XC - which that year, uniquely in the pre-Princess era, had standardised on an xx37 departure out of Reading, though that was lost the following year!

I'm wondering whether now the move towards higher frequencies is actually proving counter-productive; I've said in the past that the 20-min frequency from London to Birmingham and Manchester is actually impacting on locals out of Birmingham and Manchester and forcing those to move away from even-interval 30-min services. Birmingham to Coventry, for example, is a bit of a mess since the 20-min Virgin service came in. Do we actually need such a very high frequency? Wondering whether the best compromise was in the 2000s which typically had 30-min clockface services on most Inter-City routes, frequent enough to be convenient but not so frequent as to jam the network or introduce complexity and irregularity into local services due to a lack of paths. Wondering whether, in off-peak hours, the 2000s pattern was actually the best of all worlds - a frequent service but not a jammed railway like we have today? Peak of course needs the high frequency; I'm more talking about the standard off-peak pattern.

The issue with every 20 minutes Euston to Birmingham is that some services were then through routed on to Glasgow/Edinburgh, meaning they can be less than reliable when returning and a 40 minute service gap happens followed by a train trying to handle two trainloads. If there had been a reserve Pendolino available in the West Midlands to cover this sort of thing it would be an upside, but as normal nowadays there isn't.

This is exacerbated by the scheduling of some Euston-Birmingham services now for 5-car Voyagers instead of Pendolinos. When this first happened to me I thought it was handling a disruption, but then found it was the regular plan. Presumably it's cheaper. You can imagine what one of these follows a delayed previous service.

Also, because of all the extra services, it is now impractical for many to call at Watford Junction. This had been a significant railhead for much of Herts/Bucks/N W London/Heathrow business travel, and has lost, from my business contacts, quite a bit of high value travel.

Taunton said:

...
Yes, the Dublin to Liverpool and Belfast to Liverpool overnight boats both got in at about 6.30am. Liverpool Corporation buses were hired to do the mile or two between their docks and Lime Street. ...

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So these trains doubled as prime business time expresses along with boat trains carrying Irish ex-pats to and from the homeland. That must have made for some interesting interactions Any books written about these workings, I wonder?

Taunton said:

Oh no! There was a longstanding 05.30 from Paddington to Bristol, and thence Plymouth (going the "old way", so with a W of E xx.30 departure time), which did quite a lot of early work along the line. I used to see it most days at Bristol TM when heading to school there, and it was still the first "proper" train of the day west from Taunton. It was always a big train, with several mail vans as well, and one of the last King workings on the W of E into 1962.

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Was this not a newspaper-mail train first and foremost, with some passenger carriages attached? I mean, yes, there were similarly pre-dawn trains out of other terminii (eg 04.25 St Pancras - Derby), and yes, they were Class 1 trains, but I don't think they were really justified on passenger traffic alone. Indeed - why was this one of the last King workings if not for the fact that it was not judged in quite the same light as, eg the Limited? (I admit, however, as someone who never could catch a King at work - I am jealous But you can't have 'em all as a 10 year old kid, can you? )

It was notable that all these overnight/extra early trains continued to go the "old way" on the WR. West of England via Bristol, South Wales via Gloucester, north to Birkenhead via Oxford. This was mainly for traditional mail flows. The trains had extended station stops, but in between were some of the hardest worked and sharpest timed trains of the day, given the loads - hence the King.

The "sleepers" in the overnight services were commonly just one or two such cars, with several corridor passenger vehicles, and vans which always grew in number in the lead up to Christmas.

70014IronDuke said:

I mean, yes, there were similarly pre-dawn trains out of other terminii (eg 04.25 St Pancras - Derby), and yes, they were Class 1 trains, but I don't think they were really justified on passenger traffic alone.

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Yes, even in the early 1970's (when I was a 'trainspotting' teenager) there was still a reasonable overnight/very early/very late network of primarily mail and parcels trains with a passenger coach or two attached - doubtless handy sometimes for staff travelling 'on the cushions', shift workers and enthusiasts trying to maximise the use of all-line rovers and the like (and avoiding paying for hotel rooms). Also of course some of those trains would be hauling vans transferred from other trains - the station 'pilot' loco could be quite busy overnight shunting vans around in some places.

A new variety of extra-early train is those running from a depot which nowadays may be quite some way from the route it services. East Midland, for example, have just two trains a day from Leeds, at 0519 and 0633, running down to Sheffield and then St Pancras. I presume the 0519 in particular goes effectively empty.

I've sometimes wondered if these are an Orcats Raid on Leeds-London revenue.

Taunton said:

A new variety of extra-early train is those running from a depot which nowadays may be quite some way from the route it services. East Midland, for example, have just two trains a day from Leeds, at 0519 and 0633, running down to Sheffield and then St Pancras. I presume the 0519 in particular goes effectively empty.

I've sometimes wondered if these are an Orcats Raid on Leeds-London revenue.

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No, I don't think so. BR chose to service the HSTs at Neville Hill when they first allocated them to the MML, and so it's continued. These workings are just to save the trains running ECS. I would agree the 05.19 is probably pretty empty - not sure if it stops at Luton Airport Pkwy - that might suit some people to have a direct train that way.

70014IronDuke said:

So these trains doubled as prime business time expresses along with boat trains carrying Irish ex-pats to and from the homeland. That must have made for some interesting interactions Any books written about these workings, I wonder?

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These Liverpool / London Euston trains often had 15 or 16 coaches - albeit shorter than Mark 3 or Pendolino stock