Yes, but Inter-City services as a concept are increasingly rare in the UK.
Higher operational speeds (thus shorter journeys), higher performance units and more station stops are diluting the traidtional "inter city" concept.
That rather depends on what the concept is - there have been a few posts suggesting that BR has been gone for so long that few will remember what the original InterCity brand stood for anyway. GBR could introduce a new, slightly reimagined, inter city concept.
I think we would be left with that InterCity is a service with seat reservations, with doors in a vestibule at the end of the carriage, and with some kind of away from seat catering service?
I fear we might be left with that, but that is not what I would want to see. Seat reservations and single-width doors in vestibules (probably but not necessarily at the ends of the carriage) are features that I think should be offered far more widely than just on what I would term an InterCity service.
I would include services that are long distance, connect relatively large towns and cities, are limited stop for most of their route, and are operated by a reasonably dedicated fleet of trains, but not if they're the semi-fast service on a route that also has an intercity service.
You raise an important point there; categorisation should depend on what other services are available. The criteria that I apply for the provision of things like seat reservations and single-width doors in vestibules is based on that principle. Whatever is the main service for longish-distance passengers on a given route (unless it's a short route of under an hour) should be provided with comfortable stock that is
NOT designed to accomodate (m)any standees (double-width doors, as seen on most UK stock with doors-at-thirds, create extra standing room, so I'm opposed to things like 170s on Cardiff-Nottingham but not 350s on London-Birmingham (because the latter route has an alternative for the longer-distance passengers, in the form of Avanti (although the Pendos leave alot to be desired for other reasons))).
To me, the word
INTERCITY means fast trains between big cities (or very large towns that many/most people probably think are cities but for some reason don't technically have city status). It stands to reason that larger towns and cities will have a larger flow of passengers between them than smaller towns. More passengers means longer trains are needed, and also means more revenue. Such a route is better-able to justify investment in higher linespeeds and on-board catering is more-likely to be viable. That, to me, is the biggest difference between an
INTERCITY route like Paddington-Swansea and a fast inter-regional service (which I would call a 'regional express') like Birmingham-Aberystwyth. There simply isn't enough demand to justify a 9-car train to Aberystwyth, so no room for a buffet or first class, but in both cases the passengers are making a journey of around 3 hours or so with no faster rail alternative so deserve a comfortable journey with a reserved seat etc. London-Swansea benefits from a 125mph GWML since that is a busy route which justifies maintaining the higher speeds - the flip-side of which is that the route is busy so really should have long trains on all services - the proliferation of 5-car 125mph fleets is sad.
Changing services like Paddington – Penzance from intercity to local ones once they reach parts where they stop more makes sense, but where's the line drawn? Manchester Airport – Lancaster's 1:15 by TPE or 1:20 by Northern, with Gatley, Deansgate and Chorley the only stops on the latter and not the former. If Waterloo – Dorset's counted at least east of Bournemouth, it feels strange to exclude Manchester Airport – Barrow / Windermere, even though almost as much of its journey's as a local service as it is as an interregional one.
Aren't the trains from Paddington to Penzance still relatively limited stop even after Plymouth? Sure, they do stop more often towards the extremities, and it makes sense for them to do so, but it's still the main fast(ish) service in the area. Perhaps the 'it depends what else is running on the route' philosophy helps to explain why PAD-Penzance is
INTERCITY and Manchester-Windermere isn't (in the latter case, longer-distance passengers can take the faster service to Oxenholme and only have to put up with a Northern ironing board for the branch).
Dead for you maybe, I still think it’s a wonderful brand. And pretty timeless. Far more taste and class than many privatisation brands. And as the other person said, intercity is alive and well in other countries. However, one thing I would like to see is avoiding “intercity” becoming the bargain basement brand for non high-speed services as is the case on the continent. In one of the HS2 threads, I suggested that HS2 trains and classic former-Avanti services are both Intercity branded trains, but perhaps with different sub brands to differentiate the two.
Intercity is not quite as dead in GB as some would have you believe. As has been pointed out, EMR and ScotRail (at least) have both put the word Intercity on the side of some of their trains and both DfT and GWR have used it in the context of the IEP/IET fleets. I have a feeling that LNER may have started to call the IC225s by their proper name again as well (instead of calling them 'electric Mallard trains' as was done for a while by at least one of the various ECML TOCs) - they have certainly brought back something which looks fairly close to their original
INTERCITY livery although the iconic
INTERCITY logo itself is limited to one operational loco.
Over 60 more like. The IC 125s were being introduced nearly 50 years ago. To have meaningfully remembered what things were like before, you'd need to have been at least 10 years old.
Don't forget that Great Western Holdings initially retained the
INTERCITY logotype on the side of the coaches in the first version of the Great Western Trains green and ivory livery.
What’s the fascination with catering needing to be static buffets compared to at seat service?
A trolley service (in standard class at least) doesn't provide hot meals and there's no guarantee it will come past when you want it. If making a really long trip, there's a good chance you will miss at least one of your three main meals of the day - a cold snack like a flapjack is a
very poor substitute to a proper hot dinner. Unfortunately it's uneconomic to provide a kitchen service on a quite route that only justifies a short train, but an intercity route should be busy enough to offer hot meals on board.
I think it's makes most sense for GBR to pool resources wherever possible. Crew can then operate services according to what makes sense for each depot.
"InterCity" and the like would have value as a branding tool but not as a standalone franchise/sector.
Indeed, it makes sense to pool resources. Not just crews but also stock, and for this reason the branding/livery of similar train types should be consistent even if there is not actually a standalone InterCity franchise/sector. The key example to me is that, once MML electrification is completed, what is currently EMR would have very few services operated by class 810s which are not entirely under the wires. Rather than lug all those diesel engines around all the time just for a couple of early-morning Lincoln services, it would make much more sense for the main MML services to be operated by EMUs and put all the various class 800/802/810 bi-mode fleets into a common pool with a common livery so that they can be used across what are currently the LNER, GWR, Avanti, XC and EMR networks wherever bi-mode stock is needed.
I wouldn't use Local or Express for those purposes - I think those terms are more associated with stopping patterns than rolling stock.
This x1000. TfW should be
VERY ashamed of themselves. The word 'express', in a rail context is, first and foremost, about stopping patterns. Something like the 'Pembroke Coast Express' is (or should be) a named train - a once daily (or less) train between two points with fewer stops (or, at least, no more stops) than any other on that route. Any rolling stock branded EXPRESS, as many of the class 158s were under BR, should be designed to work express services - this means long gaps between stops should be expected, no passengers should be expected to stand and dwell times should be of little concern (after all, if you aren't stopping very often, taking 5 minutes at each stop isn't going to cause much of an impact to the overall journey, whereas it would be a serious issue on a metro service with frequent stops).
