When well managed this is a good thing, on operators with multiple trains coupled together running 12 cars at peak and 6/8 cars off peak allows the uncoupled units to go into maintanence in the day time.
Running full size sets throughout the day is great for capacity but requires either more sets (and worse utilisation) or employing more maintanence staff at night which is costly.
Bringing it back to XC, a good idea might be coupling between say Reading and Wolverhampton during the peaks, Reading is already a reversal.
Of course XC needs enough stock for this...
GWR also need some for Carmathen.
A full IET replacement would need slightly fewer, double voyager diagrams can be covered by a single well laid out 5 car IET without loosing capacity.
The GWR and LNER units aren't ideal as they have quite a lot of space wasted by the kitchen.
Before specifying IETs or equivalents I'd question whether XC actually needs 125mph stock on Manchester - Bristol/Bournemouth. The cab ends waste a lot of space...
On lumo the intermediate cars manage 94 seats, the driving vehicles manage 60.
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