Cross Country Routes that never existed, but theoretically could have

[quantinghome]

Glasgow surprisingly low, for somewhere with such good infrastructure and some CC services.

CC down to one train a day to Glasgow, I believe. It would improve significantly if there a regular CC service were to be reinstated.

 

[Severnia333]

CC down to one train a day to Glasgow, I believe. It would improve significantly if there a regular CC service were to be reinstated.

I must be out of the loop, I thought it was 1p2h alternating with Edinburgh, and then the odd Edi continuing to Aberdeen!

Only use CC for the odd trip to Brum or Leeds these days!

 

[The Ham]

OK, so I got bored, and...

View attachment 178802

Y = direct service at least 2 hourly - 1 point
ish = limited direct service - 1/2 point
N = no direct service

Settlements chosen are GB urban areas above 300,000, from this list. Yes, I've left Birkenhead in for no particular reason. And I've split out Leeds and Bradford, and Southampton and Portsmouth, based on the well-established and completely scientific criterion of Having A Reasonably Large Football Club.

Ignoring locations that don't have a well connected intercity station nearby, or a massive city in between it and the rest of the country, I'd say that the priorities should be Leicester, Teesside, Swansea, Hull.

Reading gets the prize for punching above its weight.

Liverpool isn't actually that badly connected.

Given that it's in 10th place on that list but it's the 6th largest urban area there's still a reasonable case to improve things from where it is.

Maybe the score should have a population factor.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Maybe the score should have a population factor.

Rather instructive, but substantially more work, is to then include the population for each city and the distance between each city pair, which lets you do some crude demand forecasting using a gravity model.

I took a pass at this earlier, and one of the underserved routes that came out was Brighton-Reading. Connecting Stoke to the East Midlands and Yorkshire also does good numbers, shame about those inconvenient mountains in the way.

 

[Zomboid]

Brighton-Reading

SWT used to do that. The only "express" along the coastway, IIRC.
Not sure if it was demand or something else that finished it off.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

There used to be a daily evening ECS move with a HST from Manchester to Leeds via Huddersfield in Virgin days. If the regulatory environment had been different (or XC was just a part of "British Rail PLC") this could have run in service.

 

[JonathanH]

SWT used to do that. The only "express" along the coastway, IIRC.
Not sure if it was demand or something else that finished it off.

Improvements in the Southern service on the West Coastway.

 

[The Planner]

Running the Edinburgh services via Doncaster in order to specifically release capacity for Leeds probably has some merit, but what really needs to happen is certain services having guaranteed longer trains.

There are 34 x 4 car 220s. This is perfectly reasonable, and with a good refurb, they will be fine.

There are 40 x 5 car 221s, and 4 x 4 car 221s. If someone had a bit of sense, we could move to having 20 x 6 car 221s, and 24 x 4 car 221s, which would really help as it would allow you to run some better-length single units, and also have loads of extra 4 car units sprinting about in 8 car formation, which is probably the longest they should be (9 cars don't seem to be accommodated at some stations).

Re-create 7 x 9 car 222s (this should wind people up), and then have a remaining 20 x 4 car 222s. When you consider that the 9 car 222s could be put onto a homogenous route, with First Class of a suitable size but perhaps the reintroduction of a proper, functioning buffet / cafe, you would be able to yield manage people accordingly. The 4 car units, e.g. 220/221/222 could have a limited First Class, and be refurbed more to suit things like trolley service.

With the full fleet in operation, you would be able to have a good switch around of the services.

Put Cardiff onto the 'Voyager' network full-time, and run those services as 6 cars onto the via-Doncaster route. As TPE and LNER need capacity north of York, you could divert this service to Hull via Goole or Selby, in line with the aspirations for a South TransPennine Hull; Hull being still served by express traffic over Huddersfield / Leeds, but this would be the 'new' Sheffield to Hull service.

Amend the Bristol to go to Nottingham, again probably using 6 cars. This would mean stations like Worcestershire Parkway actually get the sensible destination of Bristol for the wider South West, instead of needing a double change at Cheltenham. Amend the stopping pattern north of Birmingham so this one is only Tamworth, Burton, Derby and round to Notts.

Use the 9 car 222s on the Bournemouth to Manchester, so traffic to Birmingham Airport is on the longest possible trains. Diagram other 8 car operation in accordingly. You would have to have a timetable re-jig because of interworking at Piccadilly, but this would actually be a good thing as a delay in Bristol won't cancel a Bournemouth service.

Then overlay the second service (I'm sure the old pattern pre-Covid meant there were extra Southampton trains) with a Southampton / Reading to Liverpool, either via Solihull or Coventry (but if the latter, add in a Solihull stop, it's overdue), so that there is a 'proper' express to Liverpool every hour. This might have to stop at Hartford but that's no bad thing.

This would leave you using lovely 8 car 350s on something like a Birmingham International - Liverpool (every hour) and Manchester via Stoke / Macclesfield (every hour) to pick up the slack. I can't imagine people would be aggrieved at such a thing, especially if doing so would allow Congleton and Stone to go onto the route map.

I can already foresee some of the comments on this. "You can't get from Bristol to Manchester" even though quite frankly when you look at Birmingham's rail map, it makes far more sense for all South West traffic to go straight past University and up to the Derby lines, much the same by reply stuff from the South Coast just going to the North West. It also makes sense from a crew perspective - Manchester crew go to Reading, Derby crew go to Bristol. Having all these extra crew changes at New Street isn't helpful, just run 30-minutely paths across Birmingham and ask people to change.

Solihull stops were taken out as they just got overcrowded with local journeys.

 

[BranstonJnc]

Solihull stops were taken out as they just got overcrowded with local journeys.

I'm going to assume things have changed in the meanwhile. More West Mids local services, more Chiltern services. It's a big station and should have a proper service attached if XC go that way.

 

[The Planner]

I'm going to assume things have changed in the meanwhile. More West Mids local services, more Chiltern services. It's a big station and should have a proper service attached if XC go that way.

I'd expect it to cause the same problems as it would be the only service to/from New St. XC don't want to go that way anyway.

 

[BranstonJnc]

I'd expect it to cause the same problems as it would be the only service to/from New St. XC don't want to go that way anyway.

What they want and what they will get, I think you've said they want to run everything via Coventry for a few years. Pathing via Kenilworth will continue to be a mess until they redouble it, and that's why a service will keep running via Warwick.

I think the notion that people would let a couple of services to Moor Street go just to get on a Voyager to New Street is absurd - if I live in Lewisham, and all the trains go from Cannon Street, but there's an hourly service from Charing Cross, best assume I will be going to London Bridge on my way home each day to avoid being stuck at Charing Cross for 59 minutes if I miss one.

If you really got desperate, you would just manually manipulate the departure boards to show first stop Wolverhampton, and not calling at Solihull leaving New Street. Sorted.

 

[Zomboid]

Wouldn't the problem be in the other direction - the timetable shows a fast train from New St, so people go for that. If it's packed they don't have the choice of waiting for the next one, because that goes from Moor St.

 

[BranstonJnc]

Wouldn't the problem be in the other direction - the timetable shows a fast train from New St, so people go for that. If it's packed they don't have the choice of waiting for the next one, because that goes from Moor St.

But again, if you're on a day trip to Birmingham, four of five trains (or is it five of six?) trains go to Moor Street. The same applies in reverse, you're not going to go to New Street for a 'fast train' which spends the first 7-8 minutes stuck trying to get round Grand Jn, St Andrews and down to Tyseley. The half-hourly Chiltern fast service is going to be better.

Or, do something even more smart, and mark tickets to Birmingham that people buy as "not New Street". This is already a ticket flow managed by West Mids, so you just artificially inflate the prices for specific New Street tickets.

 

[Zomboid]

But then why were the trains filling up with local journeys?

 

[Sad Sprinter]

What they want and what they will get, I think you've said they want to run everything via Coventry for a few years. Pathing via Kenilworth will continue to be a mess until they redouble it, and that's why a service will keep running via Warwick.

I think the notion that people would let a couple of services to Moor Street go just to get on a Voyager to New Street is absurd - if I live in Lewisham, and all the trains go from Cannon Street, but there's an hourly service from Charing Cross, best assume I will be going to London Bridge on my way home each day to avoid being stuck at Charing Cross for 59 minutes if I miss one.

If you really got desperate, you would just manually manipulate the departure boards to show first stop Wolverhampton, and not calling at Solihull leaving New Street. Sorted.

Unless of course that Charing Cross train was diagramed for a MetCam Networker, and you like recording the inverter sounds for no obvious reason, but I can’t imagine anyone who would want to do that…

 

[quantinghome]

Given that it's in 10th place on that list but it's the 6th largest urban area there's still a reasonable case to improve things from where it is.

Maybe the score should have a population factor.

It's a very basic assessment. There are all sorts of other things that would need to be considered to come up with an actual plan.

 

[Zomboid]

It would be a big undertaking, but a visualization of where each population centre has links to would be interesting.

Taking Liverpool as an example, obviously it's in NW England and pretty well connected to most places of note in it's locality. Then there are reasonably frequent trains to NE England, the West Midlands, East Anglia, and London. I can't think of anything direct to the south of England or South Wales. I don't know how good the direct service to North Wales is.

The TPE service to Scotland is infrequent, but with a change at Wigan, Edinburgh and Glasgow are within reach. Which raises the question of which places can be reached within (for the sake of argument) 3 or 4 hours with a single change.

How quickly is Birmingham reached? It's an LNWR service that stops quite often isn't it? If that were faster then the single change offering would reach further.

 

[The Planner]

What they want and what they will get, I think you've said they want to run everything via Coventry for a few years. Pathing via Kenilworth will continue to be a mess until they redouble it, and that's why a service will keep running via Warwick.

I think the notion that people would let a couple of services to Moor Street go just to get on a Voyager to New Street is absurd - if I live in Lewisham, and all the trains go from Cannon Street, but there's an hourly service from Charing Cross, best assume I will be going to London Bridge on my way home each day to avoid being stuck at Charing Cross for 59 minutes if I miss one.

If you really got desperate, you would just manually manipulate the departure boards to show first stop Wolverhampton, and not calling at Solihull leaving New Street. Sorted.

Its not absurd, it was the reality. They won't be stopping at Solihull.

 

[A S Leib]

It would be a big undertaking, but a visualization of where each population centre has links to would be interesting.

Going by time rather than direct services, but I'd guess Chronotrains would be similar to what you mean?

 

[quantinghome]

Someone's been watching this thread...!

https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2025/04/25-breaking-arriva-submits-new-open.html

Open access application for Newcastle-Brighton via Reading.

 

[Zomboid]

Quite a lot of crossover with XC, be interesting to see how they get on.

 

[Topological]

Norwich to Cardiff with upgraded 345s. Not serving the Elizabeth Line core stations, but stopping at Stratford, OOC, Hayes and Harlington, Maidenhead, Slough and Reading.

If they ever electrify to Oxford/Bristol then there are more combinations that can be added.

 

[Clansman]

Thinking about my latest (and hopefully finalised) design for a model railway, I've been researching the South Coast to Northern England/Scotland cross country services quite a bit, and its led me to ponder what other region pairs we could have seen, or indeed could still see. For the benefit of my own layout, at least, I've thought of three potential "Intercity" corridors that could theoretically have existed at some point during the BR era:

Brighton to Bristol via Kensington the GWML (faster than going via the North Downs maybe?)
Brighton to East Anglia (either via Cambridge/Ely or Colchester)
Cornwall to East Anglia

Again, doesn't have to make business sense, just any theoretical region pairings that never existed.

Inverness springs to mind. A neo-Clansman type operation albeit via the ECML as XC currently do now.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Travelling regularly as I do between Glasgow and Oxford, the option of changing at Milton Keynes is attractive, especially as I can get a bus home from Oxford Parkway

I think the big Glasgow challenge is a) freight north of Preston stops you running lots of different service patterns (although I personally think all freight should use the Settle Carlisle and perhaps reopen the Waverley line to avoid this) and secondly the lack of southern capacity to support 2tph London-Glasgow.

If you can solve both then you can do a London-MK/Stafford alternating?-Preston-Glasgow super fast in ~4 hours and then a slower service that does London-MK-Stafford-all current stops including Oxenholme/Penrith in all hours-Glasgow service

That's where the junctions at Redhill are pointing the wrong way. Reversals aren't the end of the world these days, but then you've got to go across the station both ways. None of the BML junctions outside London are configured right to allow trains to go from East to West without difficulty.

I think building a bridge or tunnel over the top would be good for freight as well so would probably be worth the bother.

The challenge for passenger service is that Gatwick airport is a massive station so you would want to stop there if you could.

 

[glynmonhughes]

It would be a big undertaking, but a visualization of where each population centre has links to would be interesting.

Taking Liverpool as an example, obviously it's in NW England and pretty well connected to most places of note in it's locality. Then there are reasonably frequent trains to NE England, the West Midlands, East Anglia, and London. I can't think of anything direct to the south of England or South Wales. I don't know how good the direct service to North Wales is.

The TPE service to Scotland is infrequent, but with a change at Wigan, Edinburgh and Glasgow are within reach. Which raises the question of which places can be reached within (for the sake of argument) 3 or 4 hours with a single change.

How quickly is Birmingham reached? It's an LNWR service that stops quite often isn't it? If that were faster then the single change offering would reach further.

TPE to Scotland from Liverpool comprises three a day to Glasgow. There were hourly services to Edinburgh via Leeds but the were axed during Covid and never came back. Services to Newcastle, Hull and Cleethorpes provide decent connections.

Additional London services are slowly coming from Avanti though the disastrous LNWR services to Euston via Birmingham and Northampton were quietly ditched.

The direct services to North Wales (Llandudno) keep being pushed back, as do the direct Cardiff services. Sadly the days of services to Bristol, Plymouth and Penzance as well as Southampton and Poole are hazy memories. Changing at Birmingham is, of course, an option but my experience has always been dire. Packed to standing and the reserved seat on my ticket is occupied by someone who is very interested in something in his mid-distance vision.

 

[The Planner]

I think the big Glasgow challenge is a) freight north of Preston stops you running lots of different service patterns (although I personally think all freight should use the Settle Carlisle and perhaps reopen the Waverley line to avoid this) and secondly the lack of southern capacity to support 2tph London-Glasgow.

If you can solve both then you can do a London-MK/Stafford alternating?-Preston-Glasgow super fast in ~4 hours and then a slower service that does London-MK-Stafford-all current stops including Oxenholme/Penrith in all hours-Glasgow service

I think building a bridge or tunnel over the top would be good for freight as well so would probably be worth the bother.

The challenge for passenger service is that Gatwick airport is a massive station so you would want to stop there if you could.

Good luck clearing the Settle and Carlisle for W10 clearance.

 

[Brubulus]

Would electric locomotives for freight make a real difference to capacity? I'd guess so, especially alongside ETCS which will be getting rolled out on the north WCML around 2032, potentially providing a substantial capacity boost making these services possible.

 

[The exile]

What they want and what they will get, I think you've said they want to run everything via Coventry for a few years. Pathing via Kenilworth will continue to be a mess until they redouble it, and that's why a service will keep running via Warwick.

I think the notion that people would let a couple of services to Moor Street go just to get on a Voyager to New Street is absurd - if I live in Lewisham, and all the trains go from Cannon Street, but there's an hourly service from Charing Cross, best assume I will be going to London Bridge on my way home each day to avoid being stuck at Charing Cross for 59 minutes if I miss one.

If you really got desperate, you would just manually manipulate the departure boards to show first stop Wolverhampton, and not calling at Solihull leaving New Street. Sorted.

One difference is that you are unlikely to be going to either Charing Cross or Cannon Street to catch an onward connecting train.

 

[The Ham]

Would electric locomotives make a real difference to capacity? I'd guess so, especially alongside ETCS which will be getting rolled out on the north WCML around 2032, potentially providing a substantial capacity boost making these services possible.

Not without coaches.

Joking aside, it's why it's madness that HS2 has been delayed and cut back and delayed some more and cut back more.

It's also madness why XC aren't being allowed to have noticeable extra capacity, even though it's been obvious that they've needed more for a long time.

 

[Zomboid]

More electric freight might be able to get up the hills faster, possibly. Might get an extra path out of that.