I think it is important to clarify here that the suggestion was to cut the Reading-Newcastle service back to York, not to cut the Plymouth-Edinburgh service back to York.
I am not sure many of the XC clientele would agree. a lot of passengers use XC for leisure travel and some can be more mature / more infirm / less confident, so make the easiest / convenient journey possible. Many of this kind of passenger just want to find their seat and travel. Some have a fear of getting on the wrong train / climbing stairs etc, then risking not having a seat between say York and Durham. If I was such a passenger, and found out I had to change because of the railway having "the wrong kind of trains" I would not be happy
So what you’re effectively saying is more people on the busiest parts of the network should have to stand for an hour or more just so that the odd person wanting to do Durham - Oxford doesn’t have to change. In other words inconveniencing the majority to benefit the few.
How many people actually travel all the way through to Newcastle?
Why should the majority of passengers suffer for a handful of people who can't be bothered to do a simple change.
I agree this service should be terminated at York say and run as a double set throughout
I agree. I would much rather a second Manchester service used that path North of York instead and I’m sure a lot of the passengers would too.
In my experience very few people travel through. There’s a large turnover of passengers at New Street and of those that stay on, most have left by Sheffield. It primarily acts as a capacity boost between Reading - Birmingham - Sheffield to put those two busy routes from Birmingham up to two trains an hour, and to provide Doncaster a direct link to Birmingham.
A significant chunk of passengers. XC are the only operator that connects Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham (other than the every 2 hours Avanti) etc with Edinburgh and Newcastle/Durham on direct trains.
Introducing a change will also push people away from using the railway as it introduces more complexity and stress.
You would also then be losing passenger capacity north of York, on trains which are already heavily loaded. All those passengers crammed in on the XC now end up cramming into an LNER, or TPE. Both of which are well-loaded and often standing room only on weekends.
Not to mention the accessibility of York station and anyone with luggage needing to change trains at what is a fairly big and complex station. The railway is run for the benefit of the passengers, without those passengers we wouldn’t have a railway.
With this logic of cutting XC short at York, we may as well just say scrap the entire operation. Boom, overcrowding is sorted. There’ll be no more overcrowding.
Nobody is suggesting cutting the Plymouth-Edinburgh service at all nor removing any calls from it. There would still be an hourly service linking Edinburgh and Newcastle with Sheffield and Birmingham, and still two trains an hour between Sheffield and Birmingham.
For the handful that do travel from Oxford to Newcastle there would be no obligation to make your connection at York. You could just as easily change at Chesterfield instead and stay on the same platform, as passengers from Nottingham to Newcastle have been doing for decades.
What some people are suggesting is for a traveller from Dawlish to say Alnmouth travelling on a Dawlish Donkey to Exeter, then another GWR to Taunton, for another GWR to Bristol for an XC to Birminghm or Derby for an EMR to Sheffield, for a Northern to Doncaster for an LNER to Newcastle or maybe Alnmouth. Utterly ridiculous just because some people on here don't think XC should run 4 car units on the Newcastle terminators.
On that basis let us terminate all the EUIS-MAN Avantis at Stockport because not everyone goes to Piccadilly, and it would allow more room for Northern trains !!!!
Nobody is suggesting any of that.
Your suggestion appears to be that everywhere needs a direct service to everywhere else no matter what the impact of doing so has on busy routes like Birmingham - Sheffield. Virgin’s obsession with running short trains to link everywhere with everywhere else is the main reason XC is in the mess it’s in today, going back to something akin to Operation Princess isn’t the solution.
Just because someone might want to make a journey between a particular combination of stations doesn’t mean there has to be a direct link between them. The capacity on long distance routes needs to be where the most demand is - people from Oxford and Reading people board XC primarily to go to Birmingham, not to Durham and Newcastle. Where that train goes after Birmingham I doubt 90% of the passengers from Reading or Oxford care. You need the second hourly train between Birmingham and Reading and between Birmingham and Sheffield, plus you need the link to Doncaster, you can’t easily terminate at Doncaster so you continue one stop to York, that leaves you with a Reading - York service.
As a user from Sheffield to Newcastle I'd also point out that it's 20 minutes quicker avoiding Leeds. I'd prefer taking TPE and changing to LNER at Doncaster to some of the CrossCountry overcrowded services.
I think you highlight a very valid point, whilst it is quicker, in its current form it simply isn’t fit for purpose.
No, they were suggesting curtailing the Newcastle terminators, which makes sense and still leaves an hourly train running from the southwest to all stations. The only direct journeys which would be affected would be Newcastle Darlington and Durham to stations between Coventry and Reading
Specifically the only direct links lost would be Newcastle/Durham/Darlington - Leamington/Banbury/Oxford/Reading.
Because they travel through to Newcastle they have to be 4 cars, as the platform can't fit anything longer. This means people from Oxford to Sheffield at least have to suffer a rammed voyager.
I seriously doubt many people are traveling all the way through to Newcastle on this service, there is a much longer alternative for passengers from Birmingham northwards, there are opportunities for a cross platform interchange at Derby or Chesterfield if required.
There are loads of 9 car LNER services from York to Newcastle too
If you curtail the service at York, then you can run far longer trains, so passengers from Oxford to Derby or Sheffield can actually get a seat benefitting more people
Same platform at Chesterfield, and usually at Derby too.
There’s so many CrossCountry threads now that I genuinely forget which one I’m in every time I enter one.
Same.
How about scrapping the Reading-Newcastle services completely? I've never really understood the need for them and they have barely operated since Covid anyway. If capacity towards Reading is the main issue then it could be replaced by a hourly 8-car XC shuttle from Reading to Birmingham, potentially also adding a few extra stops. The Birmingham-Newcastle axis is already served hourly via Leeds, albeit with a slower journey time.
It’s not just Birmingham - Reading, it’s also Birmingham - Sheffield, plus the incorporation of Doncaster into the XC network. Reading - York is the most logical option.
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