Central Trains long distance routes

[Failed Unit]

Back in the early 2000s Central Trains had a number of very long distance routes.

Cambridge - Leicester - Nuneaton - Birmingham - Liverpool Lime Street.

If I recall this route was very correctly split up so EMUs could do Birmingham - Liverpool. Atlhough with the combination of below Leicester - Wolverhamton flows were lost. Nuneaton although had a direct flow to the North West used to often use this to get places like Crewe as it was more frequent at the time.

Grimsby Town - Lincoln - Nottingham - Leicester - Birmingham - Shrewsbury - Chester / Central Wales.

Split first at Birmingham to give the Birmingham - Central Wales bit to Wales and Boarders Franchise. Then at Leicester for EMT / Cross Country franchises. Press stated it was to make journeys more reliable - but many established flows lost such as Nottingham - Nuneaton and Loughborough - Birmingham as a result. This service also stopped at Newark Northgate!!

Lincoln - Nottingham - Derby - Birmingham - Cardiff.
Lincoln - Nottingham removed to take pressure off the flat crossing. Newark Northgate stops removed from service above to ensure that service was not as slow as it could be.

Skegness - Nottingham - Derby - Crewe - Manchester Airport.
Crewe - Manchester Airport was removed by demands of SRA. No idea by the route was split between Nottingham and Derby.

Did anyone actually do them end to end? (just for the fun of it). Hotch pot of traction as well at the time, anything from 150/1s, solo 153s to 158s used to show up. Were any other major flows lost as a result. Stoke-on-Trent - Nottingham springs to mind.

Amazing how some have sort of return. Such as the 3rd Derby - Nottingham path but going to Matlock and Newark - Nottingham (onwards to Derby)

I did Aberystswth - Grimsby Town once on a 150/2 - it was a marthon

 

[317666]

At one point it was definitely Stansted Airport - Liverpool Lime Street direct with a 158 or 170 (or 156 on a good* day!). I also remember that some Birmingham trains would continue to terminate at Snow Hill after calling at New Street. I never did a longer journey than Cambridge - New Street though, that's more than long enough on a 170 :mad:

*Good for me as an enthusiast, bad for all the other passengers!

 

[Failed Unit]

At one point it was definitely Stansted Airport - Liverpool Lime Street direct with a 158 or 170 (or 156 on a bad day!). I also remember that some Birmingham trains would continue to terminate at Snow Hill after calling at New Street. I never did a longer journey than Cambridge - New Street though, that's more than long enough on a 170 :mad:

I can't recall when stansted return to the network. Regional railways ran an hourly service once the station opened. This was cut back to 2 trains per day shortly afterwards due to "lack of passengers". Then at some point later it return back to hourly that we had now. Just don't know if it returned to hourly after it was cut back at Birmingham (as they could use the units that used to go to Liverpool)

Try it on a 153 - I did Manchester - Nottingham on a 153 + 156. I moved to the 156 as soon as seats became available - better leg room.

 

[Ianno87]

I can't recall when stansted return to the network. Regional railways ran an hourly service once the station opened. This was cut back to 2 trains per day shortly afterwards due to "lack of passengers". Then at some point later it return back to hourly that we had now. Just don't know if it returned to hourly after it was cut back at Birmingham (as they could use the units that used to go to Liverpool)

Try it on a 153 - I did Manchester - Nottingham on a 153 + 156. I moved to the 156 as soon as seats became available - better leg room.

The hourly Stansted leg was re-introduced in May 1998 (withdrawn 92/93 - didn't last long after introduction).

The split in two at Birmingham New Street happened 2003ish, possibly slightly earlier (?)

 

[Merthyr Imp]

Travelled Cardiff to Lincoln, and I think the reverse also, around 2000. I know it was a Class 158 going, but I'm afraid I can't be bothered to look up the details.

I can't remember whether the service still ran via Worcester Shrub Hill at that time.

Myself, my wife and son pay a biannual visit to Lincoln from Merthyr Tydfil every couple of years and found it very convenient that time not having to change at Nottingham - we wish they still did it!

 

[Galvanize]

In the Central Trains days, seeing family on the Cambrian Coast...I seem to recall most of the Aberystwyth services were running to/from Stanstead Airport! Some of them were going to Nottingham, and one or two were going to Grimsby as mentioned by the OP!

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

At one point it was definitely Stansted Airport - Liverpool Lime Street direct with a 158 or 170 (or 156 on a good* day!). I also remember that some Birmingham trains would continue to terminate at Snow Hill after calling at New Street. I never did a longer journey than Cambridge - New Street though, that's more than long enough on a 170 :mad:

*Good for me as an enthusiast, bad for all the other passengers!

Sorry to contradict, there is no possible routing from New Street to Snow Hill without a complex reversal at Tyseley, not sure this was even possible for a passenger train.

I remember living in Stafford and the Liverpool-Stansted hourly service being worked by generally 170s. It was typically on time towards Birmingham but anything up to an hour late towards Liverpool, no doubt thanks to all the main routes it crossed on its journey from East Anglia. No regrets at all when it switched to a truncated service, although the 2-car 158s that took over struggled in the peaks / at weekends until the 350s came along.
Thinking about it, I bet Birmingham-Liverpool is one of the most messed about routes over the last 25 years. Until 1995 it was roughly 2hrly InterCity loco-hauled, then replaced by a 310 operated hourly service when it was Incorporated into the RR Central franchise and slowed down considerably; replacing both the Birmingham-Stoke stopper between Wolves and Stafford and the Crewe-Liverpool local throughout. (The Stour Valley local was truncated at Wolverhampton at this time.)
Delays to the 323 delivery then saw 75mph 310 units replaced by (really comfortable) 312 units capable of 90mph, with the odd 158 or 156 thrown in. Sadly the Mk2 electrics were phased out by (I think) about 1998 and totally inferior 323s covered the service until the 170s took over on earlier mentioned long-distance 'CityLink' diagrams.

During Central days on Saturday mornings, there was a bizarre combination of a Lincoln-New Street and New Street-Hereford via Kidderminster, 150/2 when I caught it going to the SVR. 10h00 off Birmingham IIRC. Not sure how long that piece of planning lasted!

 

[317666]

Sorry to contradict, there is no possible routing from New Street to Snow Hill without a complex reversal at Tyseley, not sure this was even possible for a passenger train.

I could have sworn that announcements at Cambridge would sometimes say 'Coleshill, Birmingham New Street and Birmingham Snow Hill'. Must be either dodgy announcements or dodgy memory!

 

[43074]

Leicester lost out massively when these were scaled back, not being on the main North East/South West axis and not really being 'on the way' to anywhere. At one time, you could get from Leicester to Norwich, Skegness, Grimsby, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Liverpool, even Chester and Aberystywth, but these links were lost when the services were split. The shorter distance links incorporated within these long services, such as Leicester to Coventry & Wolverhampton, Loughborough to Birmingham etc were probably the biggest losers when things were cutback.

I've attached a Central CityLink timetable from September 2003, and 'Guide N' covering the Leicester area which shows some of these services still running - it does, however, show very few Liverpool - Birmingham - East Anglia services, which suggests they stopped running through from Birmingham to Stansted in September 2003, which coincides with Central the introduction of the CityLink brand primarily for those destinations which had been served by Virgin XC services after Operation Princess was cutback.

Also - when did Regional Railways use the Alphaline brand on the Central 'Express' services? I was aware of it's use on the long distance services from Cardiff but hadn't been aware of it being used on Central services...

[youtube]238-XwuzUlA[/youtube]

I could have sworn that announcements at Cambridge would sometimes say 'Coleshill, Birmingham New Street and Birmingham Snow Hill'. Must be either dodgy announcements or dodgy memory!

I'm pretty sure there were certainly services from the Snow Hill Lines, which were extensions of the then hourly services between Worcester and Birmingham New Street via Kidderminster & the curve at Smethwick but Birmingham Snow Hill was never directly served.

 

[PHILIPE]

They were known as the Barmouth to Yarmouth Company

 

[Welshman]

Back in the early 2000s Central Trains had a number of very long distance routes.

Skegness - Nottingham - Derby - Crewe - Manchester Airport.
Crewe - Manchester Airport was removed by demands of SRA. No idea by the route was split between Nottingham and Derby.

Did anyone actually do them end to end? (just for the fun of it).

During this time I used to travel quite regularly between Heckington [on the Skegness side of Sleaford] and North Wales, and found the through Skegness-Crewe service useful[if rather slow], as it just meant one change at Crewe. It was a treat when a 170 or an ex-TPE 158 with declassified first-class seating turned-up, but it could be a bit of a trial on a 153!

When they broke-up the service, they really did a good job of it, making a change at Nottingham and Derby necessary, and losing an hour in the process.

I remember complaining on two occasions about the break-up and receiving the replies that punctuality was suffering on such a long journey [people at Boston travelling to Wainfleet could not understand why their train was being delayed at Crewe!], and [ii] loadings between Crewe and Derby justified only a 153, but between Nottingham and Skegness often required longer trains. They didn't seem to like strengthening/dividing trains at Nottingham in those days!

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

I was studying in Nottingham at the time and when the third train each hour between Nottingham and Derby was withdrawn, the remaining two (both to Birmingham) could not cope, no two ways about it. Overnight getting to the south west at weekends suddenly became far better via St Pancras and Paddington rather than try and fail to get on the CT squeezbox on Friday evenings.

 

[MichaelAMW]

I was studying in Nottingham at the time and when the third train each hour between Nottingham and Derby was withdrawn, the remaining two (both to Birmingham) could not cope, no two ways about it. Overnight getting to the south west at weekends suddenly became far better via St Pancras and Paddington rather than try and fail to get on the CT squeezbox on Friday evenings.

I remember it well... The Crewe - Skegness was split in half, supposedly to improve timekeeping, but with the Crewe bit terminating Derby and the Skeggie at Nottingham a rather obvious additional effect, which CT gave me a load of useless nonsense about when I enquired, was the loss of a third of the service between Nottingham and Derby. It was one of those occasions on which "The Railway" appeared to be treating its passengers as the kind of idiots who wouldn't notice such things and shouldn't even ask about. Mmmm...

An effect even now is that families from Long Eaton and Derby who want to go to Skegness have to change trains, apart from the summer Saturday HST workings.

 

[ashworth]

I was studying in Nottingham at the time and when the third train each hour between Nottingham and Derby was withdrawn, the remaining two (both to Birmingham) could not cope, no two ways about it. Overnight getting to the south west at weekends suddenly became far better via St Pancras and Paddington rather than try and fail to get on the CT squeezbox on Friday evenings.

I may be wrong, but well before the days of Central Trains, when I was at college in Derby between 1975 and 78, there was only one train an hour off peak between Nottingham and Derby. This was the hourly Lincoln-Nottingham-Derby-Crewe service using the old 3 car Swindon DMUs. I used it regularly to travel between Lowdham and Derby. Apart from a few extra trains at peak times, I can't remember any other Nottingham to Derby trains other than that hourly service. There were very few Nottingham to Derby trains on a Sunday before about 4pm but that's probably because as they ran through from Lincoln, like today, there isn't much of a service. There were certainly no Nottingham to Birmingham trains in those days except for a handful in the morning and evening peaks. Derby to Birmingham, except at peak times was just served by long distance trains from the NE or Leeds to the SW or South Coast, with most calling at Burton and Tamworth.

When I look back, although it was great to have the hourly Lincoln- Crewe trains everything else in the East Midlands was a bit sparse in the 1970s compared to today so perhaps Central Trains and MML did a great job of increasing our journey opportunities.

 

[Mitch in Notts]

Though slightly earlier the 1972-1973 Nottingham summary of departures does show a roughly hourly train for Birmingham via Derby.
Sadly trains to Crewe aren't listed, but Derby to Skegness was once on a Summer Saturday & Sunday. Derby to Lincoln was roughly 2-hourly. Nottingham to Skegness was 0840, 1127 & 1722 all via Grantham, with 3 Summer Saturday direct extras!
Noticeable that some routes had slightly later last trains than now - eg Nottingham to Grantham was 2115 & 2335(SO) & to Lincoln 2230(SX) 2331(SO).

 

[LowLevel]

Alphaline was used by Central Trains for theoretically 158 and 170 operated services until Citylink came in - the benchmark was meant to be a trolley and seat reservations. In practice anything could turn up. It wasn't really promoted though beyond the alpha symbol in the timetables - as opposed to Wales and West and it's two replacements who actively branded their trains with it.

They did get their act together by the time the franchise ended with the influx of TPE 158s and the MML 170s plus the 350s but by then it was rather late - there was a point around 2005 where all of a sudden my local trains went from kicking out everything to being solid 170s with the odd 158 chucked in.

I do remember reliability was terrible and Sundays were wrecked by industrial action for years.

It's easy to just be nostalgic but Central were far from great. However, where they did excel was the ability to throw stock wherever required. On Summer Saturdays the WM 150s ran to Skegness with their large parcel areas full of luggage. Football and rugby specials were innovative. The replacement TOCs are hamstrung by having much smaller DMU fleets that are stretched already and are really limited on how they can react - EMT are probably most innovative at proactively using spare Intercity stock on local services (including investing in training local crews to operate it so it can be done on a more ad hoc basis - in a show of cooperation that obviously never happens with the RMT and ASLEF a class 222/1 is regularly diagrammed at present on the Leicester - Lincoln local service crewed by an Intercity side driver, a guards manager who signs the class 222 and a local guard who route conducts the manager if required and undertakes revenue duties) and XC do a bit with their already stretched fleet as well.

 

[Welshman]

I do remember reliability was terrible and Sundays were wrecked by industrial action for years.

Not only Sundays, but Saturday nights too.

I remember during the time of my travelling between Heckington and North Wales [mentioned in my post above], there were no Saturday trains on the Crewe-Derby line for a period of about 2 months, so RR buses operated Crewe-Derby-Nottingham, and sometimes just made the connection into the last train to Heckington at 2057! On the few occasions they were held-up by traffic, it was a taxi from Nottingham onwards at CT's expense.


On one occasion, I arrived at Crewe to find neither trains nor rr buses, so was advised to travel via Birmingham to Derby & Nottingham, with a taxi from there!

You certainly saw the country with Central Trains!

 

[Welshman]

I do remember reliability was terrible and Sundays were wrecked by industrial action for years.

Not only Sundays, but Saturday nights too.

I remember during the time of my travelling between Heckington and North Wales [mentioned in my post above], there were no Saturday trains on the Crewe-Derby line for a period of about 2 months, so RR buses operated Crewe-Derby-Nottingham, and usually made the connection into the last train to Heckington at 2057! On the odd occasion they were held-up by traffic, it was a taxi from Nottingham onwards at CT's expense.


On one occasion, I arrived at Crewe to find neither trains nor rr buses, so was advised to travel via Birmingham to Derby & Nottingham, with a taxi from there! I was a bit apprehensive about travelling that way with a Crewe-Heckington ticket, so asked for a written authorisation from Crewe enquiry office, to be met with an amazed stare and the response "It's Saturday-night, Sir. Show them a bus or cinema ticket - they won't care!"

And I needn't have worried. My ticket wasn't even examined once!

You certainly increased your railway geography with Central Trains!

 

[anti-pacer]

Did Central also do something like a once-daily Preston to Birmingham New Street service?

 

[Failed Unit]

Did Central also do something like a once-daily Preston to Birmingham New Street service?

I recall it did. Not sure why. Left new street at about 1630.

 

[LowLevel]

It was the 1650? New Street to Preston extension of a Crewe service and it was intended as a precursor to a regular Preston semi fast that in the event never happened - it got binned when London Midland took over.

 

[robbeech]

I remember frequently (well, once every 2 to 3 weeks) using the service between Nottingham and Norwich, that must have been 2000 - 2001 ish, My girlfriend at the time lived near Norwich so i'd use that service to Norwich, sometimes boarding or alighting short at Attleborough which was closer to where she lived. I was very proud of my self for finding out all on my own (at the age of 16/17) that splitting my ticket at Peterborough would save me £10. I remember falling asleep on the way back once and ending up in Sheffield which could have gone a lot worse as Sheffield is as close to where i live as Nottingham. That's the only time i've missed my stop (up to now). Never did go all the way to Liverpool on it, i didn't use the train much other than those trips and learnt to drive shortly after and that made things much easier and quicker, and cheaper.

 

[High Dyke]

I recall seeing a Skegvegas - Aberystwyth service on the simplifiers/TRUST screens.

There were some Lincoln services that continued through to Worcester; i recall my crib sheet for announcements at Newark Castle with stops at Five Ways, University and Droitwich Spa on it. Other services went through to/from Coventry via Leicester.

 

[LowLevel]

I recall seeing a Skegvegas - Aberystwyth service on the simplifiers/TRUST screens.

There were some Lincoln services that continued through to Worcester; i recall my crib sheet for announcements at Newark Castle with stops at Five Ways, University and Droitwich Spa on it. Other services went through to/from Coventry via Leicester.

I always remember using a Shrewsbury to Lincoln service regularly as a child to go into Birmingham which was generally a 156. I always wondered, as children are inclined to, about the daftest things. In this case, it was 'what sort of grand place Thurgarton must be'. Knowing what I do now in 2017 working (ironically the same now geriatric 156 units I rode on as a small child) through I'd cheerfully tell past me not to bother!!!

 

[james60059]

I've attached a Central CityLink timetable from September 2003, and 'Guide N' covering the Leicester area which shows some of these services still running -

Many Thanks for that 43074, I use to travel Coventry - Hinckley on a regular basis to visit my Mum and my then girlfriend too back in 2001-2003. Indeed Leicester took a hit when the services to Coventry ceased, I see at the time Hinckley had a half hourly service as opposed to mostly hourly now with more variety of destinations reached then.

Funny to think that since these services from Coventry were curtailed at Nuneaton they've since seen 2 new stations open on the line and the platforms at Bedworth extended but use a Class 153