Which stations/services have seen the seen the worst decline since privatisation?

[jackot]

Not sure if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find a recent thread about it.

Which stations or services have seen the biggest decline since privatisation? - this could be regarding frequency, reliability, punctuality or in the case of a station, just sheer cutback of services.

A station I have in mind would be Brighton. The station formerly had intercity services travelling as far as Edinburgh, and much more frequent services to many destinations compared to the present day. No services today that I know of travel further than Cambridge or Bedford, and there are no Cross Country services either. There are also no direct links to the west country as their were just months ago before GWR pulled the service.

 

[northwichcat]

What about Hartford? It used to have a mix of Intercity and local services, that included calls on Liverpool to London and Liverpool to Cardiff services. Now there's an hourly Liverpool to Birmingham, that's effectively a stopper until it gets south of Crewe.

 

[zwk500]

A station I have in mind would be Brighton. The station formerly had intercity services travelling as far as Edinburgh, and much more frequent services to many destinations compared to the present day. No services today that I know of travel further than Cambridge or Bedford, and there are no Cross Country services either. There are also no direct links to the west country as their were just months ago before GWR pulled the service.

Brighton's a big winner, overall. Very few people travelled on the long-distance stuff and the frequencies it now enjoys to both London Bridge and London Victoria are enviable for much of the country. It also has brand new 12-car trains and good connections along the coast.

Norton Bridge would be my (tongue-in-cheek) suggestion, but you could also add Pilning and Atherstone Polesworth as stations that have had their services mauled by post-privatisation improvements.

 

[jackot]

Brighton's a big winner, overall. Very few people travelled on the long-distance stuff and the frequencies it now enjoys to both London Bridge and London Victoria are enviable for much of the country. It also has brand new 12-car trains and good connections along the coast.

Norton Bridge would be my (tongue-in-cheek) suggestion, but you could also add Pilning and Atherstone as stations that have had their services mauled by post-privatisation improvements.

Yes, I suppose it has had some improvements with the Thameslink upgrades etc., but I still can't help but feel the loss of many services going further afield are a built of a shame, maybe more for enthusiasts than the general public.

 

[geoffk]

Brighton's a big winner, overall. Very few people travelled on the long-distance stuff and the frequencies it now enjoys to both London Bridge and London Victoria are enviable for much of the country. It also has brand new 12-car trains and good connections along the coast.

Norton Bridge would be my (tongue-in-cheek) suggestion, but you could also add Pilning and Atherstone as stations that have had their services mauled by post-privatisation improvements.

And Etruria, Barlaston and Wedgwood (but Polesworth, not Atherstone). Does the railway have something against Staffordshire?

 

[zwk500]

Yes, I suppose it has had some improvements with the Thameslink upgrades etc., but I still can't help but feel the loss of many services going further afield are a built of a shame, maybe more for enthusiasts than the general public.

Random services once a day aren't generally a good service.

And Etruria, Barlaston and Wedgwood (but Polesworth, not Atherstone). Does the railway have something against Staffordshire?

Correction noted!

 

[Walter Whigham]

Dunblane has lost its stoppers to and from Inverness and Aberdeen since the Scottish Government took over direct control of Scotrail services earlier this year.

 

[bramling]

Not sure if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find a recent thread about it.

Which stations or services have seen the biggest decline since privatisation? - this could be regarding frequency, reliability, punctuality or in the case of a station, just sheer cutback of services.

A station I have in mind would be Brighton. The station formerly had intercity services travelling as far as Edinburgh, and much more frequent services to many destinations compared to the present day. No services today that I know of travel further than Cambridge or Bedford, and there are no Cross Country services either. There are also no direct links to the west country as their were just months ago before GWR pulled the service.

Great Northern.

Okay upon privatisation, patchy under WAGN, excellent under National Express, decent under First Capital Connect, dire under GTR. Indeed my local station is, for the first time in my lifetime, virtually an irrelevance to me.

 

[Ken H]

And Etruria, Barlaston and Wedgwood (but Polesworth, not Atherstone). Does the railway have something against Staffordshire?

Polesworth is Warwickshire (Pedant alert!)

Whitley Bridge, Hensall, Snaith & Rawcliffe.

 

[Llandudno]

Ellesmere Port - Helsby

 

[Watershed]

Whitley Bridge, Hensall, Snaith & Rawcliffe

These stations were reduced to a Parliamentary service before privatisation. They did use to have an extra service around midday until 2004, but they were effectively useless already.

 

[billio]

These stations were reduced to a Parliamentary service before privatisation. They did use to have an extra service around midday until 2004, but they were effectively useless already.

(Whitley Bridge, Hensall, Snaith & Rawcliffe)

I'd use this line to travel to Whitley Bridge ( and possibly Snaith and Goole) if it had a more frequent service.

The trouble with this thread is I wasn't around my current location before privatisation so I've no way to compare services.

 

[leytongabriel]

Great Northern yes - Finsbury Pk to Moorgate is worse.
And Clapton possibly, I not quite sure when it lost stops on the Lea Valley trains to Hertford or Romford with the loss of
the twenty minutely semi-fast Southend trains, down to one an hour.
Didn't Surbiton and Slough also used to have more stops on longer distance services?

 

[Basil Jet]

Great Northern yes - Finsbury Pk to Moorgate is worse.

IIRC it was always Monday to Fridays until 8pm until a few years ago, now it's a normal service.

 

[Flying Snail]

Random services once a day aren't generally a good service.

They are for those that use them, especially when the alternative is no service, 0 being infinitely less than 1.

 

[3141]

And Etruria, Barlaston and Wedgwood (but Polesworth, not Atherstone). Does the railway have something against Staffordshire?

I don't believe this idea of a monster called "the railway" sitting in its lair and growling "Let's get Staffordshire" (or anywhere else, though residents of certain other locations will probably now leap forward to claim that their favourite place has been clobbered). In fact Staffordshire benefitted from the Trent Valley line upgrade. The closure of some of the smaller stations along that route enabled more faster services to operate without being impeded by stoppers.

But tying the concept of "the worst decline" to privatisation is difficult. Over time the pattern of rail use changes, and decisions have to be made about what to prioritise and what to reduce. If BR had continued for the last quarter of a century it would certainly have had to think about changes to the balance of services, and would probably have proposed more actual closures than we've seen since privatisation.

 

[321over360]

Great Northern yes - Finsbury Pk to Moorgate is worse.
And Clapton possibly, I not quite sure when it lost stops on the Lea Valley trains to Hertford or Romford with the loss of
the twenty minutely semi-fast Southend trains, down to one an hour.
Didn't Surbiton and Slough also used to have more stops on longer distance services?

Even ilford used to have Southend Victoria and Colchester trains stopping there, Romford was both Southend and Clacton trains

 

[ar10642]

They are for those that use them, especially when the alternative is no service, 0 being infinitely less than 1.

You can just change somewhere though, and often that's quicker than these old direct services used to be.

 

[Ken H]

You can just change somewhere though, and often that's quicker than these old direct services used to be.

but not if you are infirm, are wary of changing, or have heavy luggage. Then arranging your day to get a through train is worth it. Or people drive or dont travel.

 

[scotrail170407]

Dunblane has lost its stoppers to and from Inverness and Aberdeen since the Scottish Government took over direct control of Scotrail services earlier this year.

To be fair nearly every service to/from Inverness and Aberdeen on a Sunday still stops there and the frequency of services to and from Aberdeen the other 6 days of the week at Dunblane were never really that great even before the May 2022 timetable change.

There are still 2 services a day to Aberdeen during the week although these are stupidly the last two from Glasgow of the night (around 20:40 and 21:40 from Queen Street). Still better than nothing though I suppose

 

[MacCookie]

There are still 2 services a day to Aberdeen during the week although these are stupidly the last two from Glasgow of the night (around 20:40 and 21:40 from Queen Street). Still better than nothing though I suppose

These trains are to provide a service from Glasgow to Dunblane rather than Dunblane to Aberdeen. There are gaps in the local service in the evening between Glasgow and Dunblane which are compensated by providing calls in the intercity services.

 

[physics34]

All intercity lines including gatwick express.

 

[Watershed]

All intercity lines including gatwick express.

All intercity routes?

Sure, there are a few direct links that have been lost - the former ICXC division has probably fared worst. But overall, journey times have gone down, frequencies have increased and many stations now have a regular interval service where they only had an occasional service before privatisation. So I think this one really doesn't stand.

 

[ivorytoast28]

All intercity lines including gatwick express.

other than Avantis recent issues the WCML has improved significantly. It used to be quicker to go London Glasgow via Edinburgh and the ECML after all

 

[ar10642]

but not if you are infirm, are wary of changing, or have heavy luggage. Then arranging your day to get a through train is worth it. Or people drive or dont travel.

You can't have a direct service to everywhere though can you? With Thameslink and the Elizabeth line you can get to most of the major terminals pretty easily. The vast majority of people are just going to Gatwick or London anyway.

 

[greyman42]

All intercity lines including gatwick express.

The ECML has fared far better since privatisation.

 

[tbtc]

What’s the criteria here?

The OP states: “this could be regarding frequency, reliability, punctuality or in the case of a station, just sheer cutback of services”

However people seem to be far too focused on places that have lost a tiny number of direct services to places far away and ignore the fact that the overall number of services has grown

For example, Brighton crops up whenever we have these discussions. But it never had a frequent Cross Country/ Provincial (Wales & West, Wessex etc) service, just a handful of trains a day in total, whereas the “NSE” services have seen a big increase, both in frequencies and also lengths (twelve coaches common)

A lot of the time this is the result of clockface timetables that provide a reliable/ regular frequency and stopping pattern rather than a random combination of daily trains. Some people could afford to wait all day for the one direct service to somewhere hundreds of miles away but significantly more passengers benefit from a “turn up and go” timetable to places a short/medium distance away

Dunblane has lost some of its services to Aberdeen and Inverness, sure. But I’d suggest that the longer EMUs that replaced shorter DMUs on the vast majority of Edinburgh/ Glasgow trains is more important to your average Dunblane passenger

I also agree with @3141 in that BR would have closed a lot of lines (or withdrawn so many services that a line continued with just the bare minimum), based on the way that it closed lines/ stations during every decade of its existence - privatisation was the first time that we opened more stations than we closed for about a hundred years

the fact that the biggest “negative” for the privatisation era is a handful of stations near Stoke (which were effectively sacrificed for The Greater Good, given the thousands of additional Manchester - London passengers on that line nowadays) suggests to me that things were pretty decent overall

 

[Trainfan2019]

Brighton's a big winner, overall. Very few people travelled on the long-distance stuff and the frequencies it now enjoys to both London Bridge and London Victoria are enviable for much of the country. It also has brand new 12-car trains and good connections along the coast.

Norton Bridge would be my (tongue-in-cheek) suggestion, but you could also add Pilning and Atherstone Polesworth as stations that have had their services mauled by post-privatisation improvements.

Just out of genuine interest, what services did Norton Bridge used to have over the years? I'm not originally from Staffordshire but really interested in the closed stations.

 

[RPI]

Lelant Saltings has a worse service now being parliamentary (because the main source of traffic has been diverted to St Erth), a think Lelant also has a worse service, I know its now two hourly but in BR days almost every train stopped albeit there were a few less trains on the branch overall back then.

 

[swt_passenger]

Not sure if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find a recent thread about it.
[…]
A station I have in mind would be Brighton. The station formerly had intercity services travelling as far as Edinburgh, and much more frequent services to many destinations compared to the present day.

Brighton’s reducing relationship with the XC network since 2007 has definitely been discussed numerous times, although you’d probably have trouble, (if only using the forum search), finding all the previous discussions.

But here’s a thread from 2006 - when it was first mentioned in draft form:

Glasgow and Brighton to be cut by XC

Stations between Reading and Brighton and Crewe and Glasgow will no longer be served by The New XC franchise, the draft version of the xc franchise is avalibele on the Dft website.

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