How off-putting is it to change trains in GB - from rail regulars via 'normals' to OAPs to foreign visitors?

[Krokodil]

But how significant a factor is it? That's the question this thread is posing. Because railheading is a symptom of the last-mile problem, so understanding the causes of these things is important to decarbonisation of our lifestyle.

There are certainly plenty of people who would wait two hours for a direct train rather than risk a connection (even if that connection is on an island platform with the traincrew making that same change of trains and offering to carry your cases for you). They are largely a captive market though, one way or another they will be getting a train. What we don't see are the ones who say "sod it, I'll drive". Quantifying those is rather difficult.

You are correct though that the planning of the connection and its perceived reliability are bigger factors for many people rather than "avoid connections at all costs".

The swiss do what works for them. You're not suggesting that London and the South East is an Alpine Valley, are you?

Most of the Swiss population don't live in the Alps. Most of the UK population don't live in the South East come to that. I have no doubt though that the Swiss model would work anywhere in the UK, even if very rural routes are low frequency (TPD rather than TPH) different modes should be designed to connect.

Nothing says you couldn't alternate the destinations to provide two-hourly through services if people like that.

Which is what TfW's services out of Holyhead and Birmingham (imperfectly) do. They provide an hourly service to Shrewsbury before going their different ways to provide two-hourly direct services between Holyhead and Birmingham, Holyhead and Cardiff, and Aberystwyth and Birmingham.

It provides a regular service for medium distance travellers while still offering a choice of several departure times for long-distance travellers to travel direct. An effective hourly service is provided for those who don't mind the quick change at Shrewsbury (except on the Cardiff flow where until Liverpool-Cardiff is added in you'll have to wait for a train from Manchester).

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'd rather not change because it means collecting up my stuff and leaving my nice warm seat to stand around on a cold dark platform.

It's not always bad. I quite like changing at New St and sometimes add in a change (well, a break of journey) that isn't needed so I can avail myself of one of the wide selections of food rather than the on board rubbish (if provided), and get another decent coffee for the last bit.

What isn't good is a tight change that has a high chance of missing, or one where there's a gap of about 15-20 minutes which isn't really enough to do anything useful with (e.g. a sit down meal, even a fast food type one) but is long enough to be annoying.

Its also wasted time, particularly as being a pessimist I then normally get an earlier first train so that if its late I can still get the connection.
In most cases I wouldn't expect a connection to be held - its just not realistic on a busy railway.

I'd not call SBB quiet, and they do hold connections within reason. They also do stuff (as do DB) like advising you via their app or via the PA if it will be held or not, rather than it being utter guesswork that doesn't allow you to replan while sitting there doing nothing.

This Takt concept sounds very slow if the train has to sit at every interchange for ages.

Generally the Swiss just spread the padding we put at the end of the journey among the intermediates.

 

[mike57]

The journey planners do not always offer the optimum change, an example from my neck of the woods, Scarborough to Liverpool Lime Street. Journey planner will mandate a change at York, and if you buy advance ticket that is then where you have to change. On this journey you could actually change at York, Leeds or Huddersfield assuming the Scarborough train is one of the through services to Manchester Piccadilly. The easiest place change by far is Huddersfield, no stairs or long walks, always (well except if there is disruption) same platform, next easiest would be Leeds as its usually same platform and worst would be York, probably a long walk from Platform 4 over to platform 9/10/11 with stairs/lifts involved on every occasion. (there will be others, in the past Birmingham Int v New Street has cropped up on my travels)

Surely in these days of everything being on line a simple algorithm could be developed to select the easiest change 'If the trains you are changing between are calling at multiple shared stations, then pick same change platform as first choice, cross platform as next best if same platform is not available, and then drop back to the less easy options'. This will be much easier for people with reduced mobility or carrying heavy luggage, and the rest of the public will probably appreciate it.

You cant even force the journey planner to select a particular change, so even if you know the route and know that Huddersfield is the easiest its not possible to force it, on a couple of occasions when travelling with luggage I have used split tickets to overcome the limitation. Putting the change station into the via route doesnt fix it.

So a simple fix that reduce some of the resistance. If I were progamming it I would offer a pop-up window, "Change at xxxx" with tick boxes, and some indication of change complexity perhaps green for same or cross platform and yellow for more complex.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The journey planners do not always offer the optimum change, an example from my neck of the woods, Scarborough to Liverpool Lime Street. Journey planner will mandate a change at York, and if you buy advance ticket that is then where you have to change. On this journey you could actually change at York, Leeds or Huddersfield assuming the Scarborough train is one of the through services to Manchester Piccadilly. The easiest place change by far is Huddersfield, no stairs or long walks, always (well except if there is disruption) same platform, next easiest would be Leeds as its usually same platform and worst would be York, probably a long walk from Platform 4 over to platform 9/10/11 with stairs/lifts involved on every occasion. (there will be others, in the past Birmingham Int v New Street has cropped up on my travels)

Surely in these days of everything being on line a simple algorithm could be developed to select the easiest change 'If the trains you are changing between are calling at multiple shared stations, then pick same change platform as first choice, cross platform as next best if same platform is not available, and then drop back to the less easy options'. This will be much easier for people with reduced mobility or carrying heavy luggage, and the rest of the public will probably appreciate it.

You cant even force the journey planner to select a particular change, so even if you know the route and know that Huddersfield is the easiest its not possible to force it, on a couple of occasions when travelling with luggage I have used split tickets to overcome the limitation. Putting the change station into the via route doesnt fix it.

So a simple fix that reduce some of the resistance. If I were progamming it I would offer a pop-up window, "Change at xxxx" with tick boxes, and some indication of change complexity perhaps green for same or cross platform and yellow for more complex.

I don't think that universally works. Personally I prefer to change at New St than Wolves, International or Coventry (almost all trains serve more than one of them) unless the train I'm changing onto originates at one of the four so I can board at my leisure. This is due to the excellent food court upstairs, a visit to which renders any cross platform change not important.

I suppose you could have something like "prefer changes with minimal walking" or "prefer changes at major stations" or somesuch though.

 

[mangyiscute]

Also with some advance tickets, they would change price if you choose to stay on one train for longer - for example Reading to Preston, if you choose to change at Coventry rather than Wolverhampton you are now travelling Reading to Coventry on XC and Coventry to Preston on Avanti, so the cost of the advance tickets could change due to this. I imagine most (myself included) would always choose the cheapest option

 

[Meerkat]

I'd not call SBB quiet, and they do hold connections within reason

Is it as busy as UK rail, with as frequent trains, and as many complicated connections
ie so many routes impact XC which then impacts lots of other things?

Generally the Swiss just spread the padding we put at the end of the journey among the intermediates.

But that padding can’t be performance padding and connection time.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is it as busy as UK rail, with as frequent trains, and as many complicated connections
ie so many routes impact XC which then impacts lots of other things?

It's probably vaguely comparable with an electrified combination of TPE and Northern.

 

[Gaelan]

The journey planners do not always offer the optimum change, an example from my neck of the woods, Scarborough to Liverpool Lime Street. Journey planner will mandate a change at York, and if you buy advance ticket that is then where you have to change. On this journey you could actually change at York, Leeds or Huddersfield assuming the Scarborough train is one of the through services to Manchester Piccadilly. The easiest place change by far is Huddersfield, no stairs or long walks, always (well except if there is disruption) same platform, next easiest would be Leeds as its usually same platform and worst would be York, probably a long walk from Platform 4 over to platform 9/10/11 with stairs/lifts involved on every occasion. (there will be others, in the past Birmingham Int v New Street has cropped up on my travels)

Surely in these days of everything being on line a simple algorithm could be developed to select the easiest change 'If the trains you are changing between are calling at multiple shared stations, then pick same change platform as first choice, cross platform as next best if same platform is not available, and then drop back to the less easy options'. This will be much easier for people with reduced mobility or carrying heavy luggage, and the rest of the public will probably appreciate it.

You cant even force the journey planner to select a particular change, so even if you know the route and know that Huddersfield is the easiest its not possible to force it, on a couple of occasions when travelling with luggage I have used split tickets to overcome the limitation. Putting the change station into the via route doesnt fix it.

So a simple fix that reduce some of the resistance. If I were progamming it I would offer a pop-up window, "Change at xxxx" with tick boxes, and some indication of change complexity perhaps green for same or cross platform and yellow for more complex.

For what it’s worth, the standard algorithm is based on the “interchange station size” as displayed by, for example, BRtimes - York is flagged as a “large interchange station”, whereas Leeds and Huddersfield are medium.

In any case, Trainsplit (and the forum’s site) allow you to choose between pass, call, or change when specifying a via station.

 

[Krokodil]

Is it as busy as UK rail, with as frequent trains, and as many complicated connections

Zurich Hbf is twice as busy as London Victoria, and head and shoulders above even Waterloo. It is the fourth busiest station in the world Europe, only Gare du Nord, Hamburg Hbf, and Frankfurt Hbf are busier. The key difference is that the Swiss piled serious amounts of investment into their rail network, particularly as part of the Rail2000 upgrade (and Switzerland being Switzerland, the federal government did put the question of rail investment out to a referendum and it was approved with a 57% majority) so there is plenty of grade separation to allow a smooth flow of trains. If the Swiss were running Manchester, Oxford Road would have been remodelled with proper overlaps and Piccadilly would have gained two extra through platforms.

In terms of what happens if trains coming in from other regions are running late, I've heard it anecdotally that late-running ICEs (quite a common occurrence if you're at all familiar with DB's performance lately) do sometimes get truncated at Basel instead of running through to Interlaken.

Edited to correct factual error

 

[Meerkat]

But having stuff mainly going outward from one big station is probably easier than multiple ones.

 

[hkstudent]

Zurich Hbf is twice as busy as London Victoria, and head and shoulders above even Waterloo. It is the fourth busiest station in the world, only Gare du Nord, Hamburg Hbf, and Frankfurt Hbf are busier. The key difference is that the Swiss piled serious amounts of investment into their rail network, particularly as part of the Rail2000 upgrade (and Switzerland being Switzerland, the federal government did put the question of rail investment out to a referendum and it was approved with a 57% majority) so there is plenty of grade separation to allow a smooth flow of trains. If the Swiss were running Manchester, Oxford Road would have been remodelled with proper overlaps and Piccadilly would have gained two extra through platforms.

In terms of what happens if trains coming in from other regions are running late, I've heard it anecdotally that late-running ICEs (quite a common occurrence if you're at all familiar with DB's performance lately) do sometimes get truncated at Basel instead of running through to Interlaken.

Interestingly, seems that English speaking countries do tend to under-invest on railway compare to the German (major) speaking ones (Germany, Switzerland, Austria).
It's kind of silly that many intersections in London are still not grade separated, which would have been made years ago, if that's in Germany of Switzerland.

But the premise was that people don't like changes because they are changes, not that they don't like changes because yet don't have confidence in the system.
If we went fully swiss/german (as I think we should be as close as reasonably possible to be) then we'd be able to focus on offering sensibly timed and reliable changes to people, rather than the current obsession with running trains from everywhere into one terminus (Manchester Airport, looking at you!).

Tbf to Ryanair, they have set their entire business up around serving point-to-point routes so they have little incentive to try and appear as a single coordinated network.

And more importantly, the interchange time in Switzerland can be quite little but still having high confidence, for like 2 minutes in small or even medium station and up to 7 minutes in Zurich Hbf which is the scale is even larger than the complex of London Bridge NR + LU.

I feel that the connection time in the UK can be in default to be cut by half especially on those lengthy Cross-London change as each terminal end have 15-minute change which you can do in 3-5 minutes (from train to LU concourse and back to train on other end), BUT also leaving a apparent option to allow passengers to increase interchange time, just like what DB or SBB journey planner do.

 

[deltic]

So that means if there were two possible tube routes, one with a cross-platform change and the other 15 minutes slower but without change at the same frequency, people will prefer the slower route, right?

The 20 min interchange penalty is for national rail, I would imagine the interchange penalty for the underground will be less but will also vary by the level of crowding on each option

 

[miklcct]

I feel that the connection time in the UK can be in default to be cut by half especially on those lengthy Cross-London change as each terminal end have 15-minute change which you can do in 3-5 minutes (from train to LU concourse and back to train on other end), BUT also leaving a apparent option to allow passengers to increase interchange time, just like what DB or SBB journey planner do.

When travelling on flexible tickets, the connection time is meaningless. Taking the matter to the extreme, the practical connection time from Hammersmith & City eastbound to National Rail at Liverpool Street is about 3 minutes without running it, and I consider anything above 8 minutes at that station as a safe connection for this particular combination.

 

[BrianW]

A fascinating thread with many a personal anecdote/ experience. Planners can but try to plan for a wide range of 'traveller'- 'different strokes for different folks'. MY 'take' is that it's the uncertainty that goes with unreliability that kills the journey before it starts. The tube 'works' because it reduces those uncertainties. (Almost) every train stops at every station on its allotted route. The range of termini per line is limited. It's simple to understand (courtesy of Harry Beck). Trains are frequent. Connecting passageways are well-signed (tho may be long!)

I'm unsurprised that 'research evidence' seems to not play a big part- the network is complicated and connections cannot be made, let alone held, everywhere.

 

[railfan99]

Zurich Hbf is twice as busy as London Victoria, and head and shoulders above even Waterloo. It is the fourth busiest station in the world, only Gare du Nord, Hamburg Hbf, and Frankfurt Hbf are busier.

Perhaps you were comparing 'long distance' and omitting 'suburban, S-Bahn, Metro' and so on.

Asia is a big focus for Australian enthusiasts as to many cities we are much closer by air than you are, so understandable if time and cost preclude many visits from the UK.

Shinjuku station in Tokyo is the world's busiest with patronage of about 1.3 billion per annum, dwarfing Gare du Nord's not much above 210 million.

You've also omitted other stations in Japan, plus two stations I used in December 2019, Howrah and Sealdah in Kolkota, India that each are used by a million plus a day. There'a another station in Mumbai that I didn't travel to enjoying similar usage.

A Metro station in Guangzhou to which I've not been, Tiyu Xilu sees more than 800,000 trips a day.

 

[rapmastaj]

With the (perceived and/or real) unreliability of connections, changing trains is a risky business if the service you are changing onto is not frequent.

Personally I'm happy to change trains where necessary, but for example I would never dream of taking a local train into Leeds and changing there for a longer journey. Far far safer to cycle straight to Leeds station to begin my journey.

 

[Krokodil]

Perhaps you were comparing 'long distance' and omitting 'suburban, S-Bahn, Metro' and so on.

Asia is a big focus for Australian enthusiasts as to many cities we are much closer by air than you are, so understandable if time and cost preclude many visits from the UK.

Shinjuku station in Tokyo is the world's busiest with patronage of about 1.3 billion per annum, dwarfing Gare du Nord's not much above 210 million.

You've also omitted other stations in Japan, plus two stations I used in December 2019, Howrah and Sealdah in Kolkota, India that each are used by a million plus a day. There'a another station in Mumbai that I didn't travel to enjoying similar usage.

A Metro station in Guangzhou to which I've not been, Tiyu Xilu sees more than 800,000 trips a day.

No, I just didn't read the title of the Wiki page properly. It's the fourth busiest in Europe (and busier than anything in North America), I should have written (whoops). No one has compiled the stats for any continents other than Europe and North America.

Doesn't undermine the points anyway, as we were comparing the UK with Europe.

I'll amend the original post to avoid further confusion

 

[rapmastaj]

For what it’s worth, the standard algorithm is based on the “interchange station size” as displayed by, for example, BRtimes - York is flagged as a “large interchange station”, whereas Leeds and Huddersfield are medium.

What determines an "interchange station size"?
Notwithstanding my earlier comment, surely Leeds is a large station with an awful lot of interchanges. Is it more to do with the perceived ease of interchange at the station?

 

[Bletchleyite]

With the (perceived and/or real) unreliability of connections, changing trains is a risky business if the service you are changing onto is not frequent.

Personally I'm happy to change trains where necessary, but for example I would never dream of taking a local train into Leeds and changing there for a longer journey. Far far safer to cycle straight to Leeds station to begin my journey.

That I think is what happens with Lancaster. People don't want to risk a misconnect with the London train, so they use the local train to go into town from Bare Lane or Morecambe (driving in Lancaster is fairly grim) but if they're going to London they'll drive, get a lift or take a taxi (or some cycle, though Lancaster station has a bit of a bike theft problem I believe). Lots of people don't realise that if you miss a connection your ticket remains valid.

 

[rapmastaj]

That I think is what happens with Lancaster. People don't want to risk a misconnect with the London train, so they use the local train to go into town from Bare Lane or Morecambe (driving in Lancaster is fairly grim) but if they're going to London they'll drive, get a lift or take a taxi (or some cycle, though Lancaster station has a bit of a bike theft problem I believe). Lots of people don't realise that if you miss a connection your ticket remains valid.

Yes that makes sense for Lancaster. And even if you're aware that tickets remain valid on later trains, there's no point in risking wasting an hour of your life if you miss the connection.

Bike theft is yet another (less common) reason for avoiding interchange. Large stations are often one of the most secure places it's possible to leave a bike for a few days, but smaller stations are not. E.g. in Leeds, nobody would leave a bike at Bramley station, and you can't be sure that you'll be able to take the bike on the train into town either, but cycle to Leeds station and you're fine.

 

[JohnMcL7]

I generally avoid trips with a few changes and look to go another way, it's a hassle changing trains when I have luggage but my main concern is missing a connection and having a long wait for another. I was stuck for options recently so had to take a trip with two changes, the first train was fine but major problems on the second one so instead of having an hour changeover onto the third train I had just three minutes requiring a sprint across the station to make it. It's not very relaxing travelling on a train that may not make a connection that is infrequent and will add a good bit more time to the journey.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

What determines an "interchange station size"?

As far as I'm aware, it's simply part of the hard coded data that the journey planners have available. For personal reason I regularly download the machine-readable timetable data that ATOC makes available. If I recall correctly, the data includes a list of all stations, and one of the data fields for each station is an integer that represents 'interchange size'. I have no idea though how it was originally decided what values to put in this field.

One thing I began to ponder was the need for a controlled comparison case. The only one I could come up with is from 50 years ago, but it might prompt someone in here to find a modern example, which in turn might even prompt some research today (depending on who reads this thread).

My case is the MML service to Derby and Nottingham back in the late 60s and 70s (and maybe even some in the 80s, but I was out of it then).

As some in here will remember, in those days there were, outside a few peak-hour extras, 2 x Class 1 TPH from St Pancras, which sought to provide an express service of 1 TPH to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.

The two trains were an express - first top Leicester - and on to Sheffield, and a semi-fast to Derby or Nottingham which preceeded the express by departing St Pancras by about 30-35 mins earlier.

Thus Leicester and Sheffield got a direct 1 TPH express service, but to do the best with the resources available, the Sheffield express alternated between running via Derby one hour and Nottingham the next.

So, in the hour that the express ran via Derby, passengers for Nottingham had a very simple, cross platform connection into the semi-fast service at Leicester, where the express overtook the semi-fast and after a 4 min stop, roared off towards Trent.

That's an interesting comparison (And as an aside, a fascinating historical anecdote about how the timetable used to work). However, I don't think it's quite measuring quite what's being asked about in this thread. What you're seeing there was apparently a high rate of passengers choosing to use a faster direct train over travelling an hour or so later/earlier and having a slower journey with a change. If I've understood your description of the timetable, it meant that you might have a choice between say - leaving now and having a 2.5 hour journey, or waiting an hour and having a more convenient 2 hour journey. And realistically, almost anyone who isn't particularly arrival-time-constrained is going to pick the latter option. What that doesn't tell you is how many people would get put off travelling by train altogether because of having to change.

I actually have a more modern and very similar comparison: 8-10 years ago, I often travelled between Charing Cross and Woolwich/Abbey Wood. The choice was basically a direct train every half hour from Charing Cross, or make my way to London Bridge from where at the time there were trains every 10 minutes. You might think that was a good option, since the time spent actually on the train was basically the same whether you changed or not. But in practice, I almost always made sure I arrived at Charing Cross at a suitable time for the direct train. I figured that, by the time I'd faffed around changing and waiting at London Bridge, if it was anything less than about a 20 minute wait at CHX, I may as well wait for the direct train, and since I didn't like waiting, I would time my journeys to avoid that. That seems to show I had a strong preference for not changing... BUT.... the key thing for this discussion. If the direct train had not existed, I would not have made significantly fewer journeys: In that case, I would simply have got used to changing at London Bridge. So having the direct train made things a little easier for me, but it didn't impact how much I would have used the train.

 

[Krokodil]

We've only really talked about people who had already decided to make a journey. We haven't considered the journeys that are inspired by having a direct connection. Seeing a place name on the departures board at a station can make passengers consider visiting places they wouldn't otherwise have considered. "Look, that train goes to Windermere. Why don't we go there some day?"

 

[zwk500]

Lots of people don't realise that if you miss a connection your ticket remains valid.

But if you miss a connection into the London train at Lancaster you've got a long wait, valid ticket or not.

We've only really talked about people who had already decided to make a journey. We haven't considered the journeys that are inspired by having a direct connection. Seeing a place name on the departures board at a station can make passengers consider visiting places they wouldn't otherwise have considered. "Look, that train goes to Windermere. Why don't we go there some day?"

I think the number of people who get ideas from a departures board is vanishingly small, but you do raise an important point re advertising - both on-platform and in wider media. Having a direct train, even if it's just 1 or 2 per day, allows train companies to run adverts with 'Direct trains to the sea' or whatever and that puts the idea into people's minds to have a look at what the weather might be next weekend or whatever.

 

[Krokodil]

I also wonder if the effect of having a direct service may extend beyond that train. Passengers who haven't really used the train before may be reluctant to make a journey that involves multiple changes. Offer a direct service and once they've gained confidence in using the railway they will start to consider more complex journeys, becoming a customer for life.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But if you miss a connection into the London train at Lancaster you've got a long wait, valid ticket or not.

Indeed, which is why I very rarely go to Bletchley if connecting onto Avanti unless the journey really isn't time critical (e.g. I'm just going out for a ride) and thus a free journey via Delay Repay and an hour in the pub/Costa would be no issue.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

The rise of easy online access to journey planners should provide the opportunity to move away from the tyranny of clockface timetabling, and that would open up more scope to offer through services (or better connections) occasionally through the day.

While "xx past every hour" is clearly very easy to remember, the effort of checking a non-memorable timetable is now fairly small, and with the collapse in reliability, many travellers will choose to check even a clockface schedule for cancellations.

So occasional through services (which as noted by several people above, is really important for some travellers) should be easier to accommodate than perhaps twenty years ago.

Equally, perhaps there are lines currently running a clockface service where a service interval of 45 or 75 mins, or a completely irregular pattern, might offer useful efficiency gains without inflicting disproportionate damage on longer-distance timings. This clearly would not be clever for a branch that feeds a single main line that retains a clockface service (although looking at Windermere-Oxenholme, that seems to have random intervals already). But it could even offer an overall improvement in passenger experience in some cases - eg Matlock-Nottingham, where the hourly service currently offers a uniformly good connection at Derby for London, but a uniformly horrible connection to Birmingham. Moving away from exactly hourly could create a few good connections each day to key destinations from major junctions where capacity precludes any attempt at a "takt" style timetable.

 

[zwk500]

The rise of easy online access to journey planners should provide the opportunity to move away from the tyranny of clockface timetabling, and that would open up more scope to offer through services (or better connections) occasionally through the day.

While "xx past every hour" is clearly very easy to remember, the effort of checking a non-memorable timetable is now fairly small, and with the collapse in reliability, many travellers will choose to check even a clockface schedule for cancellations.

So occasional through services (which as noted by several people above, is really important for some travellers) should be easier to accommodate than perhaps twenty years ago.

Equally, perhaps there are lines currently running a clockface service where a service interval of 45 or 75 mins, or a completely irregular pattern, might offer useful efficiency gains without inflicting disproportionate damage on longer-distance timings. This clearly would not be clever for a branch that feeds a single main line that retains a clockface service (although looking at Windermere-Oxenholme, that seems to have random intervals already). But it could even offer an overall improvement in passenger experience in some cases - eg Matlock-Nottingham, where the hourly service currently offers a uniformly good connection at Derby for London, but a uniformly horrible connection to Birmingham. Moving away from exactly hourly could create a few good connections each day to key destinations from major junctions where capacity precludes any attempt at a "takt" style timetable.

And yet, everywhere that trains are more closely aligned to a clockface timetable, usage and feedback suggests it is better than running trains at random times. Clockface timetabling means people can arrange appointments and activities easily, and have confidence that if they're running late or whatever to be able to still catch a train in a reasonable time.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The rise of easy online access to journey planners should provide the opportunity to move away from the tyranny of clockface timetabling, and that would open up more scope to offer through services (or better connections) occasionally through the day.

Eh?

Clockface timetables are a core part of a connectional Takt by enabling the same consistent connections every hour or every two hours (or more frequently depending on your chosen pattern). Planning connections is several orders of magnitude harder when you have to do every hour separately.

Moving away from clockface timetabling would only gain benefits if you did so in order to add more direct services, not connections, but I'm really not convinced a direct service once or twice a day is genuinely more useful than a quality connection every hour. Remember how quiet XC was when it was based around a couple of direct trains a day per route?

Windermere is a bit of a mess. There used to be a sensible two-hourly pattern between Manchester Airport and Cumbria, one hour the direct service would go semifast to Barrow, the other hour it'd go semifast to Windermere, with a local shuttle calling all stations in between on both routes. It wasn't perfect as the Windermere shuttle didn't connect with the Barrow service (due to the gap between Lancaster and Oxenholme ) but it did work quite well. This is a case where moving away from clockface has downgraded the service's usability significantly, with many of the branch shuttles only useful for local journeys due to the lack of connections at Oxenholme.

 

[XC victim]

I personally don’t really have a problem with changing trains but I would think it would be very off putting if you are elderly, have any mobility issues or are travelling with children or luggage.

What I really dislike though is changing trains with cross country trains as when you board the train it is already very overcrowded with no luggage space and non-existent or poorly displayed seat reservations, resulting with you having to once again kick someone out of your reserved seat.