Avanti (West Coast Intercity) after being brought back into public ownership

[lrbvoyager]

Hi all, Do you think any new/leagacy routes will be reintroduced to Avanti or whatever it will be called when it’s part of GBR. For example Euston-Inverness. Many thanks!

 

[Royston Vasey]

More likely to cut everything back to the core. I'd worry about Holyhead, Blackpool and Edinburgh rather than Inverness.

 

[Cach17]

Euston to Inverness? Not a chance. Those few 805s are best used elsewhere.

Besides, Lumo running between Euston and Stirling negates the need to resurrect the Clansman in any way, shape or form.

 

[Kite159]

More likely to cut everything back to the core. I'd worry about Holyhead, Blackpool and Edinburgh rather than Inverness.

Out of the 3 mentioned I would imagine Blackpool would get cut back further.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Holyhead wouldn't go, it'd be too political. Blackpool is just a convenient reversing siding that avoids blocking platforms at Preston and tends to be treated as such - it is served only for operational convenience. Unlike the ECML there isn't really much running off the core.

If they're going to cut, the already discussed reduction in Manchester/Brum/Liverpool during the day and possibly sending some Glasgows to Blackpool as was the case for a while are probably the most likely.

 

[A S Leib]

More likely to cut everything back to the core. I'd worry about Holyhead, Blackpool and Edinburgh rather than Inverness.

Why worrying about Edinburgh? Unless TPE gets longer trains for Manchester Airport services before then, I can't see those being cut at least until HS2 services in some form start.

 

[lrbvoyager]

Why worrying about Edinburgh? Unless TPE gets longer trains for Manchester Airport services before then, I can't see those being cut at least until HS2 services in some form start.

The Edinburgh services are very popular and often full, no chance they’d get rid off them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2026 ==

Out of the 3 mentioned I would imagine Blackpool would get cut back further.

does anyone even use the Blackpool services?

 

[Sorcerer]

Why worrying about Edinburgh? Unless TPE gets longer trains for Manchester Airport services before then, I can't see those being cut at least until HS2 services in some form start.

If anything, HS2 would increase services to Edinburgh via WCML, as was the plan with the full route before cutbacks. London to Edinburgh is valuable market that I can't see being cut any any capacity anywhere.

Truthfully, I can't imagine any of the main trunk services (Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow) being cut, nor can I see much else changing really.

 

[SynthD]

They’re trying to make a good impression with GBR. If there was a cut to be made, it would have been well before the rebranding. Equally, if there was genuine need for a new service that satisfied Treasury, it would have been brought in, rather than wait for next December.

 

[lrbvoyager]

Do you think we will ever see services on the WCML to the highlands again?

 

[A S Leib]

Holyhead wouldn't go, it'd be too political

Wrexham, especially with Shrewsbury / Telford already having lost their services?

 

[Royston Vasey]

It feels like anything is going to be on the table if it saves cash.

The third Birmingham each hour, at least off peak.

Then the extremities:

Wrexham.

The Blackpool.

Simplify the Anglo Scottish by routing everyone to/through Glasgow. Fewer ECS movements, fewer staff bases. London and Birmingham and Lancashire to Edinburgh are already duplicated, I expect will be the view in Whitehall. And there's Scotrail for the rest.

And they may think that cutting the Holyhead back to Chester or forcing a change at Crewe and handing the North Wales coast to the Welsh national operator would be a great idea, and bung the Spanish assembly plant in Newport an order for a few more 197s to make them 6-car.

All more likely than meaningful route extensions based, I fear, on nostalgia.

 

[JonathanH]

Do you think we will ever see services on the WCML to the highlands again?

There is a daily train from the WCML to the Highlands, but a day train, no. It is unlikely. The Highland Chieftain already operates in the most natural path for a through train from Inverness to England.

The third Birmingham each hour, at least off peak.

A fast and a semi-fast isn't a very balanced service though when they basically operate at the same time at one end. It is illuminating however that the West Midlands can't support two fast trains to London an hour, particularly with HS2 being built that can only offer that kind of service. (It really does somewhat illustrate that HS2 in its initial guise isn't needed.)

Simplify the Anglo Scottish by routing everyone to/through Glasgow. Fewer ECS movements, fewer staff bases.

In that idea, does Manchester just go to Edinburgh?

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

There is a daily train from the WCML to the Highlands, but a day train, no. It is unlikely. The Highland Chieftain already operates in the most natural path for a through train from Inverness to England.


A fast and a semi-fast isn't a very balanced service though when they basically operate at the same time at one end. It is illuminating however that the West Midlands can't support two fast trains to London an hour, particularly with HS2 being built that can only offer that kind of service. (It really does somewhat illustrate that HS2 in its initial guise isn't needed.)


In that idea, does Manchester just go to Edinburgh?

I'm sure LNER would ditch the 'Chieftain' if it could - it is well off-piste to their normal sphere of operation and a nightmare when it goes wrong. GBR will provide the excuse.

Off topic, I wouldn't be surprised to see the extremities of XC trimmed too - so Aberdeen, Penzance, Paignton ...

 

[Merle Haggard]

/snip/


A fast and a semi-fast isn't a very balanced service though when they basically operate at the same time at one end. It is illuminating however that the West Midlands can't support two fast trains to London an hour, particularly with HS2 being built that can only offer that kind of service. (It really does somewhat illustrate that HS2 in its initial guise isn't needed.)


/snip/

The half-hourly LNw service between Birmingham and Euston via Northampton seems to load very well with many travelling end to end. It is slower but cheaper than the Avanti one.
In LM days, the two services very unevenly distributed across the hour. The present almost exactly half-hourly one seemed to start when Avanti reduced their service from 3 to 2, so re-instating 3 mph for Avanti would probably be at the expense of destroying the LNw even interval service.
The evidence that a service that's slower than Avanti but cheaper is popular ought to be a concern to the concept of HS2 - a service that's faster than Avanti but presumably more expensive - in my opinion.

 

[JonathanH]

In LM days, the two services very unevenly distributed across the hour. The present almost exactly half-hourly one seemed to start when Avanti reduced their service from 3 to 2, so re-instating 3 mph for Avanti would probably be at the expense of destroying the LNw even interval service.

The Avanti switch from 3 to 2 at the point when the timetables were recast was effectively because they hadn't received the full 80x fleet. It is currently 3tph, but no longer every 20 minutes, with two services first stop Coventry and Watford / Milton Keynes / Rugby served by a slower service. LNR no longer run 3tph on the Coventry corridor and the combined effect has been to deliver an even pattern service. Avanti going to 2tph by removing a fast service or staying at 3tph doesn't affect the LNR service.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Edinburgh services are very popular and often full, no chance they’d get rid off them.

The Glasgow via Birmingham is the one to cut if you're going to, as these passengers can change at Preston. The Edinburgh as you say is unlikely to be cut.

does anyone even use the Blackpool services?

It barely matters if they do. Blackpool is a service of operational convenience. It is a long siding to avoid blocking the limited number of available platforms at Preston and it is underused for the number of platforms i t has. If anything it's likely that there will end up more services there if any of the Glasgows are cut back again as they were around COVID as it's a convenient place to send them to terminate.

 

[lrbvoyager]

So the overall opinion is that it will get worse than it already is?

 

[Bletchleyite]

In LM days, the two services very unevenly distributed across the hour. The present almost exactly half-hourly one seemed to start when Avanti reduced their service from 3 to 2, so re-instating 3 mph for Avanti would probably be at the expense of destroying the LNw even interval service.

Avanti has 3tph. It's two fasts and one semifast.

They will not return to a 20 minute frequency pattern, that indeed would require a recast. They might go back to the COVID era service in some hours, i.e. removing one of the fasts and running it in the semifast path. This cut hurts relatively few people.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2026 ==

So the overall opinion is that it will get worse than it already is?

It is fairly likely the railway as a whole will, at least in terms of frequency, yes. There is an overriding desire to reduce subsidy.

 

[lrbvoyager]

Does anyone ever see Euston-Glasgow being increased to half hourly like Kings X-Edinburgh is?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Wrexham.

Happy to see that go, it's awkward and largely pointless.

The Blackpool.

Blackpool is served for operational convenience. It being served has nothing to do with passenger demand, which is why its level of service has varied a lot over the years depending on how many services they wanted to spin at Preston. If anyone built 2 more 265m terminal platforms at Preston with servicing facilities then they'd probably stop bothering with it entirely.

Simplify the Anglo Scottish by routing everyone to/through Glasgow. Fewer ECS movements, fewer staff bases. London and Birmingham and Lancashire to Edinburgh are already duplicated, I expect will be the view in Whitehall. And there's Scotrail for the rest.

Much more likely that the Glasgow via Birmingham would return to spinning at Blackpool.

And they may think that cutting the Holyhead back to Chester or forcing a change at Crewe and handing the North Wales coast to the Welsh national operator would be a great idea, and bung the Spanish assembly plant in Newport an order for a few more 197s to make them 6-car.

All more likely than meaningful route extensions based, I fear, on nostalgia.

Absolutely no chance of Holyhead being pulled, way too political.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2026 ==

Does anyone ever see Euston-Glasgow being increased to half hourly like Kings X-Edinburgh is?

Aside from if HS2 2B is built, probably not. There isn't the same level of demand as on the ECML. It is however 1.5tph - one fast an hour, one slow every 2 hours.

There is a chance, though, that if HS2 ends up saddled with 200m units that the service moves to a pattern of one doing Crewe, Preston, Carlisle and Glasgow only, and another doing one or two Trent Valley stations, Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, and possibly Lancaster/Oxenholme/Penrith/Carlisle, to deal with the capacity issues that would otherwise arise. An approach similar to SWR's Weymouths, with a pair running to Crewe and splitting into a fast and a slow, may be worth looking at in this case.

 

[lrbvoyager]

From Preston onwards they sort of have 2tph for Glasgow and 1tph for Edinburgh as TPE operate their intercity services from Glasgow/Liverpool to Glasgow/Edinbrugh.

 

[Bletchleyite]

From Preston onwards they sort of have 2tph for Glasgow and 1tph for Edinburgh as TPE operate their intercity services from Glasgow/Liverpool to Glasgow/Edinbrugh.

Those services are often seriously overcrowded, so removing too much of the Edinburgh capacity would not be sensible.

The Glasgows much less so though. I could see those reverting in part to spinning at Blackpool instead.

 

[lrbvoyager]

Those services are often seriously overcrowded, so removing too much of the Edinburgh capacity would not be sensible.

The Glasgows much less so though. I could see those reverting in part to spinning at Blackpool instead.

Or Changing the Glasgow via Birmingham to an Edinburgh service. Does anyone know why Avanti can’t operate Edinburgh services via the Trent valley to speed up journey times?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Or Changing the Glasgow via Birmingham to an Edinburgh service. Does anyone know why Avanti can’t operate Edinburgh services via the Trent valley to speed up journey times?

There aren't paths for another service up the Trent. Also, it is not (in GBR world) a competitive service - the Avanti Edinburgh serves two purposes - connecting local stations to Scotland and providing a low cost but slow option. Compare it perhaps to the Chiltern Oxford service which is not about carrying people from London to Oxford other than as a budget slow option.

In some ways (other than for London-Birmingham passengers who of course already have 7tph across the three TOCs and are going to get a load more care of HS2) it would actually be better to revert to 2tph Euston-Brum with the Scotland service being joined to the semifast. This offers a direct (if slow) Scotland and North West service to Watford, MKC and Rugby, the removal of which was a bit of a loss.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Or Changing the Glasgow via Birmingham to an Edinburgh service. Does anyone know why Avanti can’t operate Edinburgh services via the Trent valley to speed up journey times?

Even if there were paths, that would only benefit London Edinburgh customers, for whom the main operator is already LNER. The Avanti service does not exist for London Edinburgh travel. It is a London Birmingham and a Birmingham Edinburgh service, joined together for operational convenience and to widen a few direct journey opportunities like Coventry and Birmingham Airport to the North West and Scotland.

 

[JonathanH]

Does anyone ever see Euston-Glasgow being increased to half hourly like Kings X-Edinburgh is?

No. Avanti don't have the rolling stock needed to do it. Birmingham and Manchester each justify services to Scotland, and the main line from London to Glasgow avoids both. Therefore, one train each hour to Scotland from London, Birmingham and Manchester is what fits.

 

[Falcon1200]

In that idea, does Manchester just go to Edinburgh?

From personal experience the Manchester Airport/Glasgow service is busy and cannot be abandoned.

The Glasgow via Birmingham is the one to cut if you're going to, as these passengers can change at Preston.

Much more likely that the Glasgow via Birmingham would return to spinning at Blackpool.

Or Changing the Glasgow via Birmingham to an Edinburgh service.

Why this obsession with abandoning the service linking two of Britain's largest cities, Glasgow and Birmingham, not to mention other places in between, with multiple connectional opportunities? Blackpool passengers can change at Preston!

 

[lrbvoyager]

From personal experience the Manchester Airport/Glasgow service is busy and cannot be abandoned.







Why this obsession with abandoning the service linking two of Britain's largest cities, Glasgow and Birmingham, not to mention other places in between, with multiple connectional opportunities? Blackpool passengers can change at Preston!

Passenger number wise, the Glasgow via Birmingham is a lot less busy and popular compared to the Edinburgh service.

 

[Falcon1200]

Passenger number wise, the Glasgow via Birmingham is a lot less busy and popular compared to the Edinburgh service.

But still provides a vital link between two huge cities! We have already lost, pretty much, the Cross Country service, and even the Avanti route is only two-hourly. Forcing passengers to change at Preston with, in one direction at least, a long connectional wait, would be unacceptable.