Cross-country overcrowding: what could be done?

[Zomboid]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ScotRail getting the 222s. The HSTs are end of life and the longer distance flows that they're used on are suited to intercity style rolling stock. They were available and match the requirements of the operator.

XC don't even have all the 221s yet, so that needs resolving before the 222s could be considered an issue.

Actually I would suggest that someone should get an order of 810s or similar intercity bi modes, be that Scotland or XC - XC could make better use of the electric capabilities, but they'd still be able to do useful miles on electric in Scotland.

 

[rmHawk765]

Wasn't it Virgin who specified Voyager layout & length, not the DfT?

As I understand it, they had this magical timetable in mind with splitting and joining at Birmingham and the busy flows should have been covered by 8/9 cars. But apparently reliability wasn't really considered which left us with this mess.

 

[Trainman40083]

We also have a number of 220s out for refurbishment. But then we also have open access train operators trying to get their hands on the "spare" 221s

 

[Russel]

That would have sufficed. Instead you went on to write



There's a pattern of English posters opining that Cross Country is more important than ScotRail. This 'England knows best' groupthink is problematic when there's an imovable population imbalance. Across these boards there's an obsession for centrally directed cascades and they invariably follow the pecking order of London main lines -> Cross Country -> Scotland. This is not a sensible way to run a railway.

Devolution and commercialisation are the only things that guard against this type of groupthink.

You do understand that a forum is a place to discuss and share opinions?

If you don't agree with an opinion, that's fine, but it doesn't mean it's wrong or any less valid than your own.

 

[35B]

The other Railforums groupthink is HST romanticisation. The HSTs are unreliable and expensive to operate - they are in acute need of replacement.

Debatable. They are unreliable and expensive to operate, and are not up to modern standards in terms of collision safety. They need to be scrapped.

I’m not an HST romantic, and I’m not denying that they’re near life expiry. But I’m taking a hard headed look at the gaps in supply of inter city trains. And that tells me that, looked at at a network level, there’s a good case for the 222s being prioritised to XC before both fleets are replaced.

 

[NCT]

You do understand that a forum is a place to discuss and share opinions?

If you don't agree with an opinion, that's fine, but it doesn't mean it's wrong or any less valid than your own.

A forum is also a place for entrenched groupthink to be pointed out.

The ‘daddy knows best’ mentality is frankly disturbing.

 

[43074]

As I understand it, they had this magical timetable in mind with splitting and joining at Birmingham and the busy flows should have been covered by 8/9 cars. But apparently reliability wasn't really considered which left us with this mess.

The Voyagers were intended to work as single sets but with a view to lengthen them to 6-cars as was a stated aspiration by Virgin Trains at the time. The 6-car scheme was subsequently blocked by the SRA and the extra capacity never materialised, despite the new timetable generating additional demand.

Virgin XC also used to hire in HSTs during the summer and used loco hauled sets on the West Coast to Manchester periodically so it was apparent fairly quickly that they were insufficient.

 

[Russel]

A forum is also a place for entrenched groupthink to be pointed out.

The ‘daddy knows best’ mentality is frankly disturbing.

Lets leave the hyperbole there, we'll agree to disagree.

 

[LLivery]

Almost certainly it's down to money.

It's certain to cost XC more to lease and run the extra units.

It's certain they won't immediately generate sufficient extra fare income to cover those costs.

Is the inevitable extra subsidy a priority for a cash strapped government? Is their a realistic prospect that increased income could be attracted to cover those costs in the foreseeable future?

Letting those units stand idle when they're badly needed seems nonsensical, until you start doing the sums! If pushed the DfT is very likely to be effectively instructed by HM Treasury to say NO. As it may for new trains for other operators.

I frequently see XC across social media being hated for overcrowding, and most incorrectly believe it's XC penny pinching for 'shareholders'.

If people actually knew what's going on here and all wrote to their MPs about it to put pressure on, how quickly do you think they'd get the ok? I'd give it a couple weeks, max.

We're in the mad position where perfectly good trains aren't being used and people are suffering overcrowding between major cities, with sky high fares, because someone in HMT claims 8 trains would cost to much to run. Maybe I'm a 'radical loony lefty', but if we have trains, then we should use them and get the most value out of them by using them, not locking them away.

Processes like this in Whitehall is exactly what this country's problem is.

 

[bramling]

A forum is also a place for entrenched groupthink to be pointed out.

The ‘daddy knows best’ mentality is frankly disturbing.

At the end of the day there has to be some level of accountability for the fact that ScotRail / Scotland chose the HST option, which with some element of hindsight appears to have been a bad judgement. One of the problems with devolution is it seems to operate in a way where devolved administrations take credit for good things, whilst blaming others for bad things.

That said, it isn’t hard to picture a situation where XC took all the West Coast Voyagers, which would still leave the 222s free for ScotRail. Though given their current poor reliability on EMR one wonders if the 222 fleet will fare any better than the HSTs have.

 

[duffield]

All of this about the 222s and XC vs Scotrail seems a bit irrelevant, it might be relevant if XC had got all the extra Voyagers, and was able to crew all the units including the extras with none dragged around locked out, and there was still chronic overcrowding. But we seem to be a very long way from that situation!

 

[Snow1964]

We're in the mad position where perfectly good trains aren't being used and people are suffering overcrowding between major cities, with sky high fares, because someone in HMT claims 8 trains would cost to much to run. Maybe I'm a 'radical loony lefty', but if we have trains, then we should use them and get the most value out of them by using them, not locking them away.

We are also in the position where ORR published numbers indicate 10% higher passenger km for XC than year before (table 3.2), and XC travellers are also travelling average 5% further (table 3.2)

For same most recent quarter, XC increased its train km by only 3% (table 5.1), although did on average lengthen trains as operated 7% more vehicle km than previous year. (Its average train length is 5.02% vehicles derived by dividing distance in tables 6 and 5)

Now clearly, trains averaging just 5 vehicles and a 10% growth in passengers (with basically same seating configuration as previous year) are going to be crowded.

XC has just shy of 400 coaches, each 5car voyager added adds extra 1.25% to fleet size, if they got authority to add 6 in storage, still only adding 7-8% to capacity. Rather feeble when passenger km is growing at 10% per annum

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/j1mdc31j/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2026.pdf

 

[35B]

I frequently see XC across social media being hated for overcrowding, and most incorrectly believe it's XC penny pinching for 'shareholders'.

If people actually knew what's going on here and all wrote to their MPs about it to put pressure on, how quickly do you think they'd get the ok? I'd give it a couple weeks, max.

You overestimate several thousand fold the power of a few motivated complainers. You’d need a few thousand in each of a significant number of seats, making clear that this is the issue that will determine their vote to have a chance. And even then it wouldn’t be great.

 

[The Ham]

I'm unsure how you intend to diagram your 19 9 car sets. Plymouth-Edinburgh has something like 18 diagrams, so if you concentrated them on that route you'd need 21 to cover for maintenance. An XC diagram will cover multiple busy flows so it would be difficult to decide which to give a 5 car to. That's before considering the Bournemouth-Manchester-Bristol diagrams (another 18 diagrams which again see some busy flows). If we're fixing the number of vehicles at the current level then it would be better to have 26x7 and 26x5 which would allow you to spread the fleet more broadly than having a small number of very long trains.

That gives you 11,778+7,774 = 19,552 (using the Avanti interior specs, which are far better than the IET accommodation) for 312 vehicles.

Using the 342 vehicle baseline you've got from using the off-lease units, you could have 41x7 and 11x5 which would be enough to strengthen both the Anglo-Scots and the Manchester diagrams, leaving the shorter sets to the Reading-Newcastle circuit. 21,862 seats.

Why would the Plymouth/Edinburgh services need to be 9 coach trains, looking at the 1st July:

Northbound - 7 of 9 services are 5 coaches or shorter
Southbound - 6 of 9 services are 5 coaches or shorter

Even at Birmingham any Plymouth services only around 1/2 are longer than 5 coaches.

Likewise, at Birmingham, other than 3 services (in both directions) all the XC services are 5 coaches or fewer.

That's a minimum upgrade from 246 seats to 302 (but I'm not sure how easy it would be to justify a near doubling of first class seats vs + circa 15% for standard class - based on your comment about LNER layouts). More realistically it's 326 seats and so a minimum per train uplift of 32.5%.

Yes, there's a few units out of action as they are being refurbished so there could be a few extra diagrams which would be longer once the refurbishment is completed.

Worth remembering that any new fleet will drink less fuel and be more efficient to staff than Voyagers.

I've not forgotten that, and did mention that elsewhere. Likewise, I talk about the savings in track access charges, which whilst being small per coach per mile mount up to be in the millions (enough to cover the lease of several coaches).

How many single 220 diagrams remain? Don't most of them run coupled up these days except on the Reading-Newcastle run? Today's allocations aren't reliable as there's a lot of disruption.

Not lots, but not zero either at Birmingham (not double counting between the two)
Plymouth services see 2 in each direction
Manchester services see 5 in each direction

Even the 5 coach 221s are inadequate and single length sets are very much in the majority.

Even if we could deliver 90% fleet utilisation there's 19 spare sets to run services doubled up. More realistically it's closer to 17, so a little better than 1 in 3.

A 22.76% uplift on a 221 isn't going to go far, not with the amount of suppressed demand XC has.

Agree, which is why the fleet should be to GWR specification rather than LNER specification (as that's a 32.5% uplift) and the order would have an option for more coaches.

The point is to get the next step (after the spare 221's) with an offering which doesn't spook the DfT by having a fairly close fleet size to what's currently there but without over specifying the capacity.

By showing that there's a need for extra capacity it becomes easier to justify that follow on order.

7 coach trains have the issue that:
- they increase capacity vs a 4 coach unit of +126% even a 5 coach set that's +84%
- they don't maximum platform capacity but also can't run in pairs
- they may not count as full length and so the lease costs might be higher than the 9 coach sets
- you run the risk of 5 coach needing to sub for a 7 coach unit, at least with the 9 coach there's the option to run as 5+5 to sub for a 9 coach set (and it's only the 1st class passengers who have to have their seat reservations messed up, but GWR appear to manage it well).

Approve the off-lease 221s and sort out the staffing issues as a stopgap. But they really do need to look at ordering some new trains.

Agreed, the point with the 80x or similar order suggestion is that it should be a fairly easy order to justify, as its not increasing the number of coaches (in the base order, there's an option for more when passenger numbers increase) but it creates a load of extra capacity.

Chris Green realised what was going to happen and wanted to increase unit lengths. The Strategic Rail Authority (who were the contemporary equivalent of the DfT for this purpose) said "no".

Even if they'd allowed enough units to run the Euston services to be lengthened to be 9 coaches (11 sets, so only 44 extra coaches) that would have given XC an extra 4 diagrams which could have been 4+4 sets and 8 diagrams which would have been 5 coach sets vs 4 coach sets.

The Voyagers were intended to work as single sets but with a view to lengthen them to 6-cars as was a stated aspiration by Virgin Trains at the time. The 6-car scheme was subsequently blocked by the SRA and the extra capacity never materialised, despite the new timetable generating additional demand.

Virgin XC also used to hire in HSTs during the summer and used loco hauled sets on the West Coast to Manchester periodically so it was apparent fairly quickly that they were insufficient.

Likewise, Project Thor (bimodal upgrade to the 22x fleets) appears to have looked at the 5 coach sets and gone "we need 2 pantograph coaches for this".

Rather it should have said "OK, as we need 2 pantograph coaches for trains of 6 coaches or more, let's remove 1 coach from the 5 coach sets and then create a new sub fleet of 9 coach sets and Virgin use those rather than 5+5 sets almost all the time".

The 220 fleet would now be all 5 coach sets (34)
The 221 fleet would be a mix of 5 and 9 coaches, with 15 sets of 9 coaches (11 at Virgin and 4 at XC) and 29 sets of 5 coaches (all at XC - note this isn't far behind the current 32 at XC)

That would have allowed XC at that time to run 16 of the 44 diagrams as 9 coach units or 5+5 trains. Once they gained the Avanti sets, that would have risen to 35 out of 44!

The 222 fleet would be:
11 sets of 9 coaches*
16 sets of 5 coaches

*would have required the purchase of 1 diesel coach, otherwise one would have been 8 coaches.

However, it would have been far more useful than a load of 5, 6, and 9 coach sets and would have required fewer new coaches

As such there were two missed opportunities to increase capacity - if they had both been taken XC could potentially have had a universal fleet of 8 coach sets (the same capacity as all diagrams being 5+4 trains).

 

[deltic08]

Wouldn’t it be better if any GWR units were used, that they just do Bristol to the South West as shuttles to reduce operational complexity. This could release some Voyagers for strengthening. Doing that along with XC picking up the spare Voyager Units would probably solve most problems on the Voyager routes. To take it a step further spare 350’s could run Birmingham-Manchester shuttles and/or York-Edinburgh/Glasgow shuttles to allow capacity improvements on the Turbostar routes too.

Not pretty, not ideal but it would solve most issues with extant resources.

I don't understand your logic of operating bimodes on totally unelectrified lines southwest of Bristol when they could be running miles on electric in the north of England and Scotland.

 

[Krokodil]

Why would the Plymouth/Edinburgh services need to be 9 coach trains, looking at the 1st July:

So why order a handful of very long units, resulting in some trains being over capacity and others being under capacity when you could order a larger proportion of medium length units (still the same total number of vehicles) and spread the extra capacity around?

- they increase capacity vs a 4 coach unit of +126% even a 5 coach set that's +84%

I don't see the issue. If you order 41x7 and 11x5 then it'll be the latter used on the diagrams which genuinely only justify a shorter unit. I.e. Reading-Newcastle. XChas a huge amount of suppressed demand (and therefore revenue).

- they don't maximum platform capacity but also can't run in pairs

Can a 234m fixed formation unit use all relevant platforms, stabling points etc.? GWR have or had issues sending a nine car onto Long Rock for example.

- you run the risk of 5 coach needing to sub for a 7 coach

Which is a bit better than five-vice-nine. I've travelled with GWR enough to have experienced that.

at least with the 9 coach there's the option to run as 5+5 to sub for a 9 coach set

No reason that you couldn't put 5+5 out in place of a demic 7 if you've got the units on hand. Running non-gangwayed units in multiple is a pain anyway, even if you sort out XC's present issues you've still got the problrm of not being able to balance the passengers between units and the duplication in catering staff.

Besides, I've been told on here many times by the "experts" that TOCs shouldn't have spare capacity in their fleets to cover for unit failures, that's luxury thinking. Apparently we should just short-form and use a shoehorn on the passengers.

 

[The Ham]

So why order a handful of very long units, resulting in some trains being over capacity and others being under capacity when you could order a larger proportion of medium length units (still the same total number of vehicles) and spread the extra capacity around?

For the reason that there's already some trains on the XC network which are already fairly long replacing a 4+5 (446 seats) or a 5+5 (492 seats) with a new 7 coach train with 452 seats isn't giving much extra capacity or is actually reducing capacity.

I don't see the issue. If you order 41x7 and 11x5 then it'll be the latter used on the diagrams which genuinely only justify a shorter unit. I.e. Reading-Newcastle. XChas a huge amount of suppressed demand (and therefore revenue).

Which, as I've highlighted above, means that a 7 coach unit is suppressing demand on services which are currently run as longer units.

As I've said, the idea isn't to spook the DfT, a lot of 7 coach sets which will be used on services where that's +84% is likely to them questioning why that much extra capacity is needed when 5 coach sets give you nearly 1/3 extra capacity vs the current 5 coach units (and nearly 2/3 extra capacity vs the current 4 coach units - an extra 63%) whilst at the same time either only creating marginally gains or reducing capacity on the current services which have higher capacity.

Also, part of the design of 5 and 9 mixed fleet is to reduce the number of coaches slightly (47×7 and 11×5 matches the number of coaches withthe spare 221's, the upgraded 5 and 9 is 10 coaches fewer).

Can a 234m fixed formation unit use all relevant platforms, stabling points etc.? GWR have or had issues sending a nine car onto Long Rock for example.

Indeed, but even a 7 coach set isn't without issues, it would need to occupy a maintenence road for 9 coach sets and as the proposal is that they make up the majority of the fleet, that's going to cause issues.

Which is a bit better than five-vice-nine. I've travelled with GWR enough to have experienced that.

Indeed, however, where XC differs from GWR is that the 9 coach sets were only adding 18% vs the HST's and so there's was little spare capacity and a 5 coach set was 59% of the replaced sets.

In comparison a lot of the XC fleet is seeing a significant uplift in capacity and even the longest sets (5+5) are seeing at least a 21% uplift whist 4+5 (+33.6%) and 4+4 (+49%) larger increases.

Likewise the capacity of a 5 coach 80x is 66.3% of 5+5 train and 81.5% of a 4+4 train.

The other difference is it's not uncommon for such trains to have the rear portion locked out of use.

However, to overcome that is fairly easy:
1) push DfT to allow 1 extra 5 coach set to have an extra spare to make it less likely to be an issue
2) use the follow on option to create a few more 5 coach sets to mean there's more as spares
3) use the follow on order to create more of the spares sets as 9 coach sets (so it's more likely that a 9 coach set would need to sub for a 5 coach set)

No reason that you couldn't put 5+5 out in place of a demic 7 if you've got the units on hand. Running non-gangwayed units in multiple is a pain anyway, even if you sort out XC's present issues you've still got the problrm of not being able to balance the passengers between units and the duplication in catering staff.

Indeed, but if they are only on an unplanned basis, the impact would only be if a 9 coach unit failed, there wasn't a spare 9 coach unit and therefore a 5+5 train was used.

Besides, I've been told on here many times by the "experts" that TOCs shouldn't have spare capacity in their fleets to cover for unit failures, that's luxury thinking. Apparently we should just short-form and use a shoehorn on the passengers.

Actually, arguably, that makes the situation better.

If the 9 coach sets are scheduled to be run 100% of the time that means a greater percentage of the 5 coach sets will be sat idle, meaning that it's more likely that there would be units to spare to run as 5+5 (at least for part of the journey).

By using 85% of the fleet that means the following spares, when split equally:
3 × 9 coaches
5 × 5 coaches

When focused on the 5 coach sets only:
8 × 5 coaches

As such there's a higher probability that there's 2 available 5 coach sets at a depot vs there being a spare 9 coach set available.

 

[Strathclyder]

The 'should ScotRail have taken the HSTs or ordered new-builds in 2015?' debate has been done to death several dozen times over and will always come back to the same answers no matter how many times it's retread. Hindsight is just that, it was a poor choice and the 222s perhaps aren't the best choice of replacement given their well-known issues, but we are where we are now.

Let me clear-eyed here, regardless of my feelings towards the HSTs which are frankly irrelevent, I'm none too happy with how the whole Inter7City saga has played out and how much buckpassing has been going on in Holyrood over who's really at fault for it going so utterly pear-shaped (though if any of you knew about the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry fisaco in anything other than passing detail, this is nothing new).

No, the core problems that predominate in the vicious cycle XC has been stuck in for over 25 years are rooted in a complete failure of rolling stock spec & provision from the word go, a timetable recast whose fundemental flaws were glaringly obvious as soon as it came into contact with reality, ever-rising passenger numbers being crammed into inadeaqute trains, having to pay sky-high fares for the 'privilege' & most damning of all, successive governments from both sides of the aisle alongside the SRA/DfT and ultimately the Treasury all being unable or just flat out unwilling to actually grasp the sodding nettle of actually solving in the long-term or at least mitigating in the short-term these long-standing issues properly.

You can fairly criticise Holyrood/Transport Scotland for many things and for making utterly cackhanded policy decisions (as a Scot, god knows I do), but XC's perpetual festering in it's doomloop is one thing they can't really be blamed for.

 

[Harpo]

No, the core problems that predominate in the vicious cycle XC has been stuck in for over 25 years are rooted in a complete failure of rolling stock spec & provision from the word go, a timetable recast whose fundemental flaws were glaringly obvious as soon as it came into contact with reality

I see no issues with the timetable only the paucity of resources allocated to it.

 

[yorksrob]

That's a good point. The Government's had a quarter of a century to sort out capacity on XC. With the exception of some HST's being obtained at one stage (which was a genuine improvement in many ways) no one's managed it.

 

[Strathclyder]

I see no issues with the timetable only the paucity of resources allocated to it.

I was more referring to the Operation Princess fiasco laying the seeds, but yes, you also raise a good (and obvious) point about the current one being chronically under-resourced, both in terms of stock and staff.

 

[Snow1964]

That's a good point. The Government's had a quarter of a century to sort out capacity on XC. With the exception of some HST's being obtained at one stage (which was a genuine improvement in many ways) no one's managed it.

I have always wondered if the 26 extra trains that have sat on DfT procurement pipeline information document for a few years were related to XC services. And why has DfT Passenger services asked for them?

Procurement of new rolling stock to support TRU and the longer-term decarbonisation of the network..Fleet size of 29units, with an option to procure up to 55 units in total. The additional units reflect an ask from DfT Passenger Services, a separate business case will be undertaken should there be a requirement to procure additional units above the 29.

I know some people say the info is inaccurate (although why they publish it with knowing wrong info, makes no sense to me). But to some extent if first 29 units (which another document says are about 205m long) are for Transpennine, then was the aim for TRU to take over some of the services north of York or Leeds on electrified routes With optional 26 units

Thinking about it, doesn't make a lot of sense for Transpennine to do services up West Coast to Glasgow, and XC to do East Coast to Edinburgh, so combining them as a business unit gives better long distance network

So maybe Government (or its DfT Passenger Services part) does have a plan, it's just never convinced the Treasury that plan has a business case and has reverted to do nothing.

DfT and associated bodies listing of future commercial contracts (commercial pipeline) - GOV.UK

www.gov.uk

 

[Krokodil]

For the reason that there's already some trains on the XC network which are already fairly long replacing a 4+5 (446 seats) or a 5+5 (492 seats) with a new 7 coach train with 452 seats isn't giving much extra capacity or is actually reducing capacity.

The few double sets in service aren't the ones struggling for capacity (assuming that the whole train is actually in use). It's the single diagrams which need the help. What 5+5 formations are in use anyway? I can find one, possibly two examples of 4+5 all day today (and one of those is because it splits at Gloucester) You will help a far greater number of people by distributing the extra vehicles as widely as possible, rather than concentrating them on a tiny handful of diagrams.

 

[LLivery]

We are also in the position where ORR published numbers indicate 10% higher passenger km for XC than year before (table 3.2), and XC travellers are also travelling average 5% further (table 3.2)

For same most recent quarter, XC increased its train km by only 3% (table 5.1), although did on average lengthen trains as operated 7% more vehicle km than previous year. (Its average train length is 5.02% vehicles derived by dividing distance in tables 6 and 5)

Now clearly, trains averaging just 5 vehicles and a 10% growth in passengers (with basically same seating configuration as previous year) are going to be crowded.

XC has just shy of 400 coaches, each 5car voyager added adds extra 1.25% to fleet size, if they got authority to add 6 in storage, still only adding 7-8% to capacity. Rather feeble when passenger km is growing at 10% per annum

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/j1mdc31j/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2026.pdf

Indeed, it's clear this isn't right and feels like ''computer says no''. And I will never understand how on earth we're saying our railway is at capacity all over the place and then think running 5 car Intercity trains is acceptable, especially when there trains available, journeys are growing AND we're apparently aiming for economic growth. Well... growth requires mobility.

You overestimate several thousand fold the power of a few motivated complainers. You’d need a few thousand in each of a significant number of seats, making clear that this is the issue that will determine their vote to have a chance. And even then it wouldn’t be great.

I'm not sure about that. It's more the point that if this was truly in the public eye this wouldn't continue for long.

Have an MP raise this at PMQs saying ''Mr Speaker, XC's reputation for overcrowded long distance trains is well known. The fares are high, delays often make my constituents late. But it's been brought to my attention that we've got a some perfectly good trains in Derby, the exact same type XC already have. However, it turns out Mr Speaker, that rather than XC not wanting them - they in fact do, the government is preventing them being used, so they're locked away in Derby, sat doing nothing, while passengers often get left behind on platforms. Prime Minster, is it because it doesn't serve London? Is this what my constituents have to look forward to with nationalisation? Or can sense prevail?''.

What would the PM say? ''We need to do a business case to determine if they should be used to reduce crowding?'' Not a chance.

Rail nationalisation is a major government policy. Something like this, even if it's not directly linked, looks awful on them. Even Starmer would find this to be ridiculous.

So why order a handful of very long units, resulting in some trains being over capacity and others being under capacity when you could order a larger proportion of medium length units (still the same total number of vehicles) and spread the extra capacity around?

Motorways are busy, domestic flights are too. They wouldn't be over capacity if the fares were right. We use high fares to 'manage demand' by putting people off and then claim there's not enough demand to have long trains. It's mental gymnastics.

Lumo and airlines proves that you just need have reasonable fares to fill an Intercity train in most cases. And of course, Burnham is the one saying fares must come down.

 

[NCT]

The PM would say ‘I will meet with my right honourable friend and ask the Transport Secretary to explore options’.

 

[Harpo]

Lumo and airlines proves that you just need have reasonable fares to fill an Intercity train in most cases.

No. Lumo and airlines prove that cherry picking a few times and days of operation of a reservation-only service turns a profit on every single service.

It’s a massively different business model to a turn-up-and-go public service with regular intervals throughout the day.

 

[35B]

I'm not sure about that. It's more the point that if this was truly in the public eye this wouldn't continue for long.

Have an MP raise this at PMQs saying ''Mr Speaker, XC's reputation for overcrowded long distance trains is well known. The fares are high, delays often make my constituents late. But it's been brought to my attention that we've got a some perfectly good trains in Derby, the exact same type XC already have. However, it turns out Mr Speaker, that rather than XC not wanting them - they in fact do, the government is preventing them being used, so they're locked away in Derby, sat doing nothing, while passengers often get left behind on platforms. Prime Minster, is it because it doesn't serve London? Is this what my constituents have to look forward to with nationalisation? Or can sense prevail?''.

What would the PM say? ''We need to do a business case to determine if they should be used to reduce crowding?'' Not a chance.

Rail nationalisation is a major government policy. Something like this, even if it's not directly linked, looks awful on them. Even Starmer would find this to be ridiculous.

I think it could be embarrassing, but getting from there to a change in policy that will cause ministers to commit to a change in policy and make the Treasury free up the money is a bigger step than you allow. And that assumes the particular question lands and gets airtime on the news, which would in turn rely on the MP raising the question getting significant media interest before raising the question.

We've seen it in the past, and we'll see it again.

 

[Transilien]

We can all burn through umpteen sets of crayons on XC’s woes but it is caught viciously by the railway’s post-covid shift from TOC-led growth to DfT’s misguided penny pinching.

We can only hold our breath to see what Burnham does to DfT and the treasury’s remits.

This isn’t true, Cross Country has been plagued by overcrowding since the voyagers were introduced. The voyagers were shorter units compared to the LHCS they replaced, but that was supposed to be okay because frequency was increased. This created the situation where more trains meant more people were travelling on more shorter trains than before. Virgin (to their credit) petitioned the DFT for more carriages for the voyagers but the DFT said no. This was over 20 years ago during the time of so called TOC-led ‘growth’ that you mentioned.

 

[Trainman40083]

No. Lumo and airlines prove that cherry picking a few times and days of operation of a reservation-only service turns a profit on every single service.

It’s a massively different business model to a turn-up-and-go public service with regular intervals throughout the day.

But are they cherry picking or running a service that challenges short haul flights...Lumo running full trains and even LNER is seeing growth.. The ability to get on a train, with a seat must attract new business.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Jul 2026 ==

This isn’t true, Cross Country has been plagued by overcrowding since the voyagers were introduced. The voyagers were shorter units compared to the LHCS they replaced, but that was supposed to be okay because frequency was increased. This created the situation where more trains meant more people were travelling on more shorter trains than before. Virgin (to their credit) petitioned the DFT for more carriages for the voyagers but the DFT said no. This was over 20 years ago during the time of so called TOC-led ‘growth’ that you mentioned.

Yes they wanted 6 car trains and the DfT said no.. The more attractive you make the service, the more people will choose to use it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Jul 2026 ==

Indeed, it's clear this isn't right and feels like ''computer says no''. And I will never understand how on earth we're saying our railway is at capacity all over the place and then think running 5 car Intercity trains is acceptable, especially when there trains available, journeys are growing AND we're apparently aiming for economic growth. Well... growth requires mobility.



I'm not sure about that. It's more the point that if this was truly in the public eye this wouldn't continue for long.

Have an MP raise this at PMQs saying ''Mr Speaker, XC's reputation for overcrowded long distance trains is well known. The fares are high, delays often make my constituents late. But it's been brought to my attention that we've got a some perfectly good trains in Derby, the exact same type XC already have. However, it turns out Mr Speaker, that rather than XC not wanting them - they in fact do, the government is preventing them being used, so they're locked away in Derby, sat doing nothing, while passengers often get left behind on platforms. Prime Minster, is it because it doesn't serve London? Is this what my constituents have to look forward to with nationalisation? Or can sense prevail?''.

What would the PM say? ''We need to do a business case to determine if they should be used to reduce crowding?'' Not a chance.

Rail nationalisation is a major government policy. Something like this, even if it's not directly linked, looks awful on them. Even Starmer would find this to be ridiculous.



Motorways are busy, domestic flights are too. They wouldn't be over capacity if the fares were right. We use high fares to 'manage demand' by putting people off and then claim there's not enough demand to have long trains. It's mental gymnastics.

Lumo and airlines proves that you just need have reasonable fares to fill an Intercity train in most cases. And of course, Burnham is the one saying fares must come down.

Love the bit about PMQs. A very specific loaded question, where the decision has to be made.. You can't help the blame on XC, if it is the DfT stopping the problem being resolved.. So, when all the franchises are nationalised, who will they blame them? Or will they make the decisions they should have made years ago? It seems clear people want to use trains (in some cases, of things change/improve).. Ironically many of the XC problems would be solved if HS2 was delivered as originally planned.

 

[JonathanH]

Virgin (to their credit) petitioned the DFT for more carriages for the voyagers but the DFT said no.

That issue with that, put another way, is that Virgin asked for more subsidy for an operation that was losing a lot of money, which it was fairly straightforward for the DfT to turn down.

So, when all the franchises are nationalised, who will they blame them?

They will continue to blame the years of privatisation, and the damage it did to the railway. It is already happening.