The thing I feel really frustrated by on UK railways right now is the fact that despite passenger numbers being at their highest level ever in 2018/19 (appearing to recover pretty quickly from Covid), investment in the industry is the poorest it has ever been from New Labour's no growth contracts, to austerity, and now the indecision of the post-Cameron governments alongside pretty much losing control of the Treasury, which persistently has its sights set on rail spending - (This isn't to say money couldn't be spend more efficiently on the railways, but the way they are going about doing it is entirely backwards.)
When people choose rail, they find the trains are full and the prices ever increasing - at a time we are being (rightly) told to ditch cars/planes to take the train!
I also worry that incoming rail cuts will hit the areas that have bounced back the best (e.g. weekends/off peak, especially outside of London). So basically expect the regional Sunday service which is already back to 120% capacity to be cut, but the SouthEastern commuter services to remain in place.
All of this will likely exacerbate the capacity issues going on with the 22X and 170 fleet. XC's trains have been overcrowded since I started travelling on them as a kid (~10yrs) and they are still overcrowded today, with little plan to resolve this besides the HS2 eastern leg, which will inevitably be cut - the bit that serves an area really struggling as a whole with lack of rail capacity...
I accept that the London-Norwich route is busy and needs these long trains, but so is the MML line and the places served much larger and more important than most places on the Anglia main line, but MML passengers are crammed into inadequate 4 and 5 car trains and look like being so for the foreseeable. It is the same parent company that runs both and I find it difficult to comprehend how they could have bid for both franchises but with such a disproportionate capacity between the two routes and allowed to get away with it.
Blame the DfT and Treasury for that.
Ditto but worse
Liverpool to Manchester to Sheffield to Nottingham to Peterborough to Ely to Norwich
A service linking seven key cities of England is treated with disdain
Such a miserable service.
Liverpool to Norwich would ideally be six cars Liverpool to Nottingham and four cars onwards to Norwich. I suspect that there is suppressed demand on this route. I would personally use it more if I knew I would stand a high chance of getting a seat.
Oh yes, I used to avoid travelling because it was so stressful. Things improved with the TPE 185 doublings when I went back to visit family in Derbyshire from Manchester, but since moving to Nottingham I'm back to relying on the overcrowded EMR service.
There's a lot of suppressed demand on the route as well as a lot of traffic that travels alternative routes, even so far as to use it Norwich to Peterborough then travel via Leeds. A fine example is the Crewe line, it now runs through to Nottingham and has two carriage and throughout the day it loads almost to capacity. Go back a few years, it was a single 153 loading about 30-40 throughout the main part of the day. Its more than double that now and we're "post covid".
I don't think I went via Sheffield at all last trip to Manchester. Went Notts-Crewe and on to XC, then there was a mixture of engineering works and Sunday timetables that made it more efficient to go via Stafford/Tamworth. Was interesting, but a bit tiring!