Why are XC allowed to continue?

[WAB]

This is the problem with the past few decades nailing the flag to the unit mast. It's not flexible and putting units together wastes space with unnecessary cabs and money with duplication of staff. I doubt 80x units would cost more in fuel, Voyagers must be some of the most inefficient trains going in regards to fuel consumption; I hate to think how much they use. To be honest they're a total relic and need replacing but I appreciate this won't happen. They really should never have been allowed to order diesel only units especially as they replaced electric locos, a ludicrous move.

There were plenty of good reasons to go to multiple working. Even in the later days of loco-hauled sets into the 80s and 90s, it was increasingly fixed formations, for those same reasons. I don't think there has been any appetite to give up track capacity for loco changes, staff station pilots, and shunt carriages during the day.

XC doesn't seem to have any market focus. It ignores potential traffic and serves some routes at frequencies that don't make sense.

Potential traffic? They've spent the last 22 years with severe overcrowding and the only solutions being to price people off and steadily retreat into the core network. All of the other InterCity TOCs have received or are about to receive new trains whilst they've had to scrounge for small number of their old trains back plus a long-overdue basic refurbishment. It's not surprising that they're not able to follow the market very well, and that they lack direction as a company. What do you think doesn't make sense about the current services, out of interest?

Is that the view of people with the ability to do anything about it, or just one that people have on this forum? Most importantly, is there any evidence in print that Beacon Rail, the DfT or CrossCountry take that view?

The only people who have any ability to change the situation are the DfT, and they don't really care. Plenty at XC accept that 4-cars are useless, and that a majority of diagrams need high capacity units of at least 5-cars, doubling up for the core section during the day on most services. In lieu of that, they also accept that it's more realistic that they will instead need to run double Voyagers on the majority of services in the core, and several that extend beyond it.

 

[Energy]

There were plenty of good reasons to go to multiple working. Even in the later days of loco-hauled sets into the 80s and 90s, it was increasingly fixed formations, for those same reasons. I don't think there has been any appetite to give up track capacity for loco changes, staff station pilots, and shunt carriages during the day.

Birmingham New St is much busier now, changing locos would not be easily feasible.

Railjets over in Austria are fixed formation, they got ordered instead of MUs because OBB had recently purchased new locos and didn't want to waste them.

The only people who have any ability to change the situation are the DfT, and they don't really care. Plenty at XC accept that 4-cars are useless, and that a majority of diagrams need high capacity units of at least 5-cars, doubling up for the core section during the day on most services. In lieu of that, they also accept that it's more realistic that they will instead need to run double Voyagers on the majority of services in the core, and several that extend beyond it.

Since the Arriva award, the focus has been getting XC closer to breaking even. It's been accepted that the voyagers have poor seat density and aside from ditching them they'd have to spend more on additional stock.

IIRC Virgin in the New CrossCountry franchise wanted to extend the 220s to 6 cars.

 

[rjames87]

Potential traffic? They've spent the last 22 years with severe overcrowding and the only solutions being to price people off and steadily retreat into the core network. All of the other InterCity TOCs have received or are about to receive new trains whilst they've had to scrounge for small number of their old trains back plus a long-overdue basic refurbishment.

Seem to be overlooking the fact that the Cross Country franchise received new stock far earlier than many other ‘Intercity’ TOCs did during early privatisation. The Voyagers aren’t ancient.

 

[dk1]

Seem to be overlooking the fact that the Cross Country franchise received new stock far earlier than many other ‘Intercity’ TOCs did during early privatisation. The Voyagers aren’t ancient.

Which many seem to forget on here. They are going nowhere for years to come.

 

[HSTEd]

Seem to be overlooking the fact that the Cross Country franchise received new stock far earlier than many other ‘Intercity’ TOCs did during early privatisation. The Voyagers aren’t ancient.

They are also a massive millstone around the railway's neck.
Twenty years old and they are a money pit in operational terms, the sooner they go for razorblades the better.

 

[dk1]

They are also a massive millstone around the railway's neck.
Twenty years old and they are a money pit in operational terms, the sooner they go for razorblades the better.

Maybe in 15-20 years time

Well possibly 15 tops. I was forgetting it’s 2024 already.

 

[WAB]

Maybe in 15-20 years time

Well possibly 15 tops. I was forgetting it’s 2024 already.

They're reliable, but I don't think they've got 47 year lifespans

Seem to be overlooking the fact that the Cross Country franchise received new stock far earlier than many other ‘Intercity’ TOCs did during early privatisation. The Voyagers aren’t ancient.

The other franchises got refurbished stock (in quantities and qualities suitable for the demand) and additional carriages and sets at the same time. The Op Princess morale boost didn't last very long on XC... the Cinderella of InterCity got to go to the ball and see the Prince for five minutes before being dragged out by the royal guards...

 

[dk1]

They're reliable, but I don't think they've got 47 year lifespans

They’d only be 42-43 years old in 2044.

 

[Richard Scott]

There were plenty of good reasons to go to multiple working. Even in the later days of loco-hauled sets into the 80s and 90s, it was increasingly fixed formations, for those same reasons. I don't think there has been any appetite to give up track capacity for loco changes, staff station pilots, and shunt carriages during the day.

I appreciate that but operational convenience is not matching demand or are the railways run for sake of the operators?
At least loco hauled could easily be lengthened at depot if needs be. With modern bi-mode locos the need for changing locos can be removed.
It just seems loco haulage has been thrown in the scrap heap and ignored but it still has its place.

 

[HSTEd]

I appreciate that but operational convenience is not matching demand or are the railways run for sake of the operators?
At least loco hauled could easily be lengthened at depot if needs be. With modern bi-mode locos the need for changing locos can be removed.
It just seems loco haulage has been thrown in the scrap heap and ignored but it still has its place.

The problem we have here is that the short version of the train has little operational advantage over the longer one. It can't be timetabled differently if you want to keep the vaunted flexibility, it still requires the same amount of staff etc.

All you save is marginal distance related maintenance and marginal fuel, which aren't big costs.
Meanwhile loco haulage imposes major costs in terms of poor acceleration performance. It will never match a modern unit in acceleration so it's a liability in timetabling terms.

The ideal for the modern railway would be every single train to have identical performance characteristics. That is not really possible at the moment but ditching loco haulage gets us a big chunk of the way there.

 

[rjames87]

They're reliable, but I don't think they've got 47 year lifespans


The other franchises got refurbished stock (in quantities and qualities suitable for the demand) and additional carriages and sets at the same time. The Op Princess morale boost didn't last very long on XC... the Cinderella of InterCity got to go to the ball and see the Prince for five minutes before being dragged out by the royal guards...

I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Half of the problem with XC today is as a result of Operation Princess improving demand through improved service. It just didn’t have enough stock to deliver upon the growth. One of those business plans that only works if all parts are delivered and as they were blocked from more stock it wasn’t to be. I’m glad XC didn’t have to suffer on with refurbished stock for another 20 years like most other TOCs had to.

 

[WAB]

I appreciate that but operational convenience is not matching demand or are the railways run for sake of the operators?
At least loco hauled could easily be lengthened at depot if needs be. With modern bi-mode locos the need for changing locos can be removed.
It just seems loco haulage has been thrown in the scrap heap and ignored but it still has its place.

Imagine XC had the capacity of its current fleet, but in locohauled form. CrossCountry would have to have station pilots at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Manchester Picc, Reading, Bournemouth, Plymouth and Penzance, and would still have to split and join trains en route to keep capacity up. The fleet, staff and track costs would make early fleet replacement seem a no-brainier in comparison.

 

[Richard Scott]

The problem we have here is that the short version of the train has little operational advantage over the longer one. It can't be timetabled differently if you want to keep the vaunted flexibility, it still requires the same amount of staff etc.

All you save is marginal distance related maintenance and marginal fuel, which aren't big costs.
Meanwhile loco haulage imposes major costs in terms of poor acceleration performance. It will never match a modern unit in acceleration so it's a liability in timetabling terms.

The ideal for the modern railway would be every single train to have identical performance characteristics. That is not really possible at the moment but ditching loco haulage gets us a big chunk of the way there.

Looking at some posts previously saying that journey times haven't really improved over past few years acceleration isn't much of an issue.

Imagine XC had the capacity of its current fleet, but in locohauled form. CrossCountry would have to have station pilots at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Manchester Picc, Reading, Bournemouth, Plymouth and Penzance, and would still have to split and join trains en route to keep capacity up. The fleet, staff and track costs would make early fleet replacement seem a no-brainier in comparison.

Doesn't have to be 100% loco hauled fleet and even if it was modern coupling systems could be employed, nothing to say everything has to have buckeye or screw couplings.
I know it's pie in the sky anyway idea of loco haulage as I know it won't return but no reason why it wouldn't make sense on certain routes and it isn't considered. In my opinion cross country went backwards with Voyagers ditching electric traction over electrified routes.

 

[43096]

Imagine XC had the capacity of its current fleet, but in locohauled form. CrossCountry would have to have station pilots at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Manchester Picc, Reading, Bournemouth, Plymouth and Penzance, and would still have to split and join trains en route to keep capacity up. The fleet, staff and track costs would make early fleet replacement seem a no-brainier in comparison.

Why would station pilots be needed - they'd be push pull formation sets by now. You can also fit autocouplers to locos...

 

[irish_rail]

@irish_rail Why do you hate the east side so much?

Not long ago, you were campaigning for LNER to lose their 9-car Azumas to GWR, reducing capacity for communities on the ECML; now you are advocating for the same communities to lose their only direct service to Scotland!

Give us a break!

Nothing personal, just seems that the East of the country tends to get a pretty sweet deal when it comes to train formations and the like. If the 80x fleet where re organised now with a blank sheet of paper there is no way LNER could have so many more 9 cars than GWR. Similarly with XC. There's plenty of trains to Yorkshire and the North East, but nothing to important cities like Liverpool or Glasgow (via WCML) . There is a real inblance in this country. The population in the west is far greater, and yet the north west lacks direct trains to anywhere in the south (London and Manchester to Bomo excluded). In my view that needs to change. If we could cut XC north of York , but in return get XC running to Liverpool, Crewe, Preston etc , I think it'd be a far more useful network.

So back to racing to the bottom. Manchester already has a Scotland service so you propose making it 2tph, again at the expense of the West Yorkshire market making it 0 trains.

Here’s a thing. The WCML has a heavier population to the south whereas the ECML is the other way around (London excepted) so XC would be sacrificing a large part of their network to run through sparser territory.

I mean you’ve already said yourself that you don’t see a problem with changing trains so those from the SW like yourself can always change onto the WCML services at Birmingham New Street for a faster journey to Scotland and save XC losing money from no longer serving the larger populous route.

Changing at New St isn't an option for North west to south west, as the trains are timed to arrive and depart at more or less the same time, giving an hour fester at New St, which is hardly an attractive connection. Just one reason why direct trains are needed North west to south west. Not to mention changing at New St isn't exactly a pleasant experience. I'd sooner change at York.....

 

[Oxfordblues]

I travelled today on 1O16 the 4-car 11:25 Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth. It started off almost full and at each station crowds of potential passenger attempted to board until by Wolverhampton it was dangerously overloaded and many were left behind. The subsequent 1O18 was also only 4 cars, as was 1O20 and 1O22, so it wasn't a case of waiting an hour for the next one. I presume the officer responsible for diagramming the units for this route drives to work and home again. If he or she tried to get to the office on one of their trains they might not make it!

 

[mangyiscute]

Nothing personal, just seems that the East of the country tends to get a pretty sweet deal when it comes to train formations and the like. If the 80x fleet where re organised now with a blank sheet of paper there is no way LNER could have so many more 9 cars than GWR. Similarly with XC. There's plenty of trains to Yorkshire and the North East, but nothing to important cities like Liverpool or Glasgow (via WCML) . There is a real inblance in this country. The population in the west is far greater, and yet the north west lacks direct trains to anywhere in the south (London and Manchester to Bomo excluded). In my view that needs to change. If we could cut XC north of York , but in return get XC running to Liverpool, Crewe, Preston etc , I think it'd be a far more useful network.

This is such an awful argument - you literally say "oh the north west has no trains to the south if you ignore all of the trains it has to the south" plus you ignore the Manchester to Bristol services.
Ignoring London, because that is a very different service and both NE and NW have good(ish) London services, the NW has a half hourly XC service to Birmingham which then serves Reading to Bournemouth, and to Bristol, while the NE only has it hourly (with a few extras to Reading) and it only serves the South West, nothing central without a change in Birmingham.
Furthermore, the NW has plenty of trains to Birmingham compared to the North East, which is the main place to change services when travelling north to south not via London.

 

[JonathanH]

There's plenty of trains to Yorkshire and the North East, but nothing to important cities like Liverpool or Glasgow (via WCML) .

There are plenty of trains to Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow on the West Coast, many with more capacity than those to Yorkshire, it is just they don't operate to Bristol and further west. Birmingham has more capacity to Preston than Leeds.

Most importantly, the operation on the West Coast allows almost all of the trains from Birmingham to Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow to run with electric traction. Until there is a different CrossCountry fleet, the last thing anyone wants is 4-coach Voyagers running to those destinations.

Clearly cutting XC at York would equally remove diesel trains from an electric route.

 

[HSTEd]

Looking at some posts previously saying that journey times haven't really improved over past few years acceleration isn't much of an issue.

Whilst acceleration does affect journey times, sometimes significantly, that is not all it does.

If trains have identical characteristics they can be stacked far closer together than if they have a lumbering loco hauled train that can't be signal checked without losing a relative age trying to accelerate away again.

 

[dk1]

I travelled today on 1O16 the 4-car 11:25 Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth. It started off almost full and at each station crowds of potential passenger attempted to board until by Wolverhampton it was dangerously overloaded and many were left behind. The subsequent 1O18 was also only 4 cars, as was 1O20 and 1O22, so it wasn't a case of waiting an hour for the next one. I presume the officer responsible for diagramming the units for this route drives to work and home again. If he or she tried to get to the office on one of their trains they might not make it!

I don’t think it’s dangerous. After almost 39yrs on the railway its last one in shut the lid. Tube trains race along deep underground in a tunnel with 100s crammed in each carriage.

 

[irish_rail]

There are plenty of trains to Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow on the West Coast, many with more capacity than those to Yorkshire, it is just they don't operate to Bristol and further west. Birmingham has more capacity to Preston than Leeds.

Most importantly, the operation on the West Coast allows almost all of the trains from Birmingham to Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow to run with electric traction. Until there is a different CrossCountry fleet, the last thing anyone wants is 4-coach Voyagers running to those destinations.

Clearly cutting XC at York would equally remove diesel trains from an electric route.

Indeed Birmingham does have plenty of trains to the north west. But as i stated , that forces everyone from the entire south west quadrant of the country to have to change at New Street, which is not an easy place to change and many of the connections are poor.

I agree the electric argument is a big factor in north west having a limited scope for through trains. A real shame that something so positive can prove to be a negative. An argument for XC to get bi mode 80x if ever I heard one.

This is such an awful argument - you literally say "oh the north west has no trains to the south if you ignore all of the trains it has to the south" plus you ignore the Manchester to Bristol services.
Ignoring London, because that is a very different service and both NE and NW have good(ish) London services, the NW has a half hourly XC service to Birmingham which then serves Reading to Bournemouth, and to Bristol, while the NE only has it hourly (with a few extras to Reading) and it only serves the South West, nothing central without a change in Birmingham.
Furthermore, the NW has plenty of trains to Birmingham compared to the North East, which is the main place to change services when travelling north to south not via London.

You mention the Manchester to Bristol service, but this service is utterly pointless and rarely busy south of Birmingham. Why? , because it essentially only serves Bristol. No onward connections are available to any where else. If it ran to Taunton or Exeter it would have a use as it would be reachable from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. As it stands, it is only useful to Bristol. Literally everyone else is forced onto the hourly Plymouth. This is a good example of a service that probably could be extended to Exeter on an hourly basis IF XC were to cut running north of York. It would massively improve journey opportunities to and from the ENTIRE south west and would be more transformative than XC running north of York, which is a "nice" to have but nothing more.

 

[WAB]

I presume the officer responsible for diagramming the units for this route drives to work and home again. If he or she tried to get to the office on one of their trains they might not make it!

Don’t blame the train planners - they don’t get to decide how large the fleet is!

Doesn't have to be 100% loco hauled fleet and even if it was modern coupling systems could be employed, nothing to say everything has to have buckeye or screw couplings.
I know it's pie in the sky anyway idea of loco haulage as I know it won't return but no reason why it wouldn't make sense on certain routes and it isn't considered. In my opinion cross country went backwards with Voyagers ditching electric traction over electrified routes.

Doesn’t obviate the need to shunt carriages and run locomotives round. You’re adding an extra driver for the entire day at each terminus and splitting point, you need to find the capacity for the extra movements, and you need the places to store the locomotives. Not cheap.

 

[daodao]

I travelled today on 1O16 the 4-car 11:25 Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth. It started off almost full and at each station crowds of potential passenger attempted to board until by Wolverhampton it was dangerously overloaded and many were left behind. The subsequent 1O18 was also only 4 cars, as was 1O20 and 1O22, so it wasn't a case of waiting an hour for the next one. I presume the officer responsible for diagramming the units for this route drives to work and home again. If he or she tried to get to the office on one of their trains they might not make it!

This is why I would argue for the Manchester Piccadilly to Birmingham segment to be removed from XC and run by 8-coach emus under another TOC. There are a significant number of spare emu trains currently deemed surplus to requirements, not the least the class 350 units. IMO, there should be no trains from Manchester or NW England direct to the south and south-west of England via Birmingham while these routes are not electrified.

 

[43096]

I presume the officer responsible for diagramming the units for this route drives to work and home again. If he or she tried to get to the office on one of their trains they might not make it!

If you have a finite resource (the number of trains available for service daily), which service are you taking a set off (or, indeed, cancelling) to add to the train you're on/hyperventilating about? Because the diagrams are worked on the basis of which trains need most capacity from the limited fleet XC has.

 

[Richard Scott]

Whilst acceleration does affect journey times, sometimes significantly, that is not all it does.

If trains have identical characteristics they can be stacked far closer together than if they have a lumbering loco hauled train that can't be signal checked without losing a relative age trying to accelerate away again.

Ok, I see that but a modern loco with 3phase transmission is going to be significantly better than older designs. I appreciate it won't be up there with distributed drive trains but won't be far behind. A 68 on load 5 seems to accelerate fairly quickly and would imagine an electric loco would be very close to unit acceleration (some European locos pick up their skirts and really go from a standing start).
A loco with load 7/8 may well be lighter than a 7/8 car unit given that vehicles in many units approaching 50 ton mark now, that would at least put a little back in loco hauled favour.
Be interesting to see comparison on energy consumption between the two types too.

 

[DavidGrain]

I remember when it was Virgin, Richard Branson boasted about doubling the number of trains omitting to mention that they were half length. I realised how stupid this was in the early days when I saw at New Street a Voyager leaving for Yorkshire and immediately afterwards on another platform a Silverlink 12 car train arrived from London. My first experience of travelling on a voyager was when I found that my reserved seat was in a non-existant coach L.

 

[YorksLad12]

Clearly cutting XC at York would equally remove diesel trains from an electric route.

Have the east coast power upgrades been completed? Some LNER journeys are/were diesel under wires in parts.

 

[GatwickDepress]

A spectre is haunting CrossCountry — the spectre of Operation Princess.

It's an absolute embarrassment that CrossCountry has suffered the same overcrowding issues for over two decades and there's been no real motivation from the Department for Transport to resolve this for the long term - those surplus carriages added into the Turbostars a few years ago and the Voyagers coming over from Avanti is really just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. How much suppressed demand is there that will be taken up within a year or two of those Voyagers entering service? I feel like there is a lot.

I only ever take CrossCountry services now if I know they're going to be quiet, otherwise I use slower routes or book a coach ticket. Other people I know don't even bother with the train now and just drive, simply because their daily experiences with CrossCountry have been that continually bad.

However, I am proud of this thread for not suggesting that the solution to CrossCountry's woes is somehow serving Brighton again. I knew it took a lot of restraint.

 

[Trainbike46]

Seem to be overlooking the fact that the Cross Country franchise received new stock far earlier than many other ‘Intercity’ TOCs did during early privatisation. The Voyagers aren’t ancient.

Which many seem to forget on here. They are going nowhere for years to come.

Why would the railway/XC keep the voyagers beyond their current lease-end date unless they are cheaper per seat than new bimode 125 mph trains would be?

voyagers are bad trains; their relatively low capacity makes them expensive to operate on a per-seat or per-passenger basis, and they don't really make up for it in any other way.

There's a reason Avanti decided to dump theirs, even though they are only about 20 years old

 

[dk1]

Why would the railway/XC keep the voyagers beyond their current lease-end date unless they are cheaper per seat than new bimode 125 mph trains would be?

This will be interesting to see now the DfT have total control.