A very high number of passesngers on Lincoln - Nottingham services have connections onwards to Derby, Birmingham New Street and the South West. Getting rid of the Birmingham services by splitting franchises was a bad idea. I remember a direct train in the morning even went from Birmingham New Street to Sleaford.
Lincoln had services to Crewe and Aberwystwyth under Central in it's early days.
I know we are going off topic a bit, but the history of the Lincoln services from my memory.
When the 150/1s ruled the line the service was Lincoln - Birmingham New Street, by the late 1980s this was changed from Cleethorpes - Birmingham New Street.
Alternate hours,
Cleethorpes and all stations to Newark NorthGate, Newark Castle, Nottingham, then onwards to Birmingham
Lincoln and every shack to Nottingham then onwards to Birmingham
154002 was the common performer on the 0730 Lincoln - Birmingham which meant it was often in Market Rasen at about midday
Cleethorpes - Newark was split off again after a couple of years, which sped up the journey to Lincoln (from Birmingham) and made little difference to Cleethorpes as the Newark shunt was slow.
When the 158s came along BR didn't think that we deserved to remain connected to Birmingham and diverted the trains to Coventry. This is how it remained until privatisation, then Central train gave us Grimsby - Birmingham New Street via Derby again. At one point Lincoln had 2x trains per hour to Birmingham, one via Liecester and the other via Derby.
Lincoln - Nottingham returned to hourly via Liecester, then DfT split the service with the but you can travel direct to Barrow-upon-Soar (who cares)
It is a pity when CT reduced Lincoln - Nottingham to hourly they didn't take away the route via Liecester, maybe then we would be in XC but we will never know.
Lincoln - Coventry was diverted to Birmingham because of the WCML works.