VT0 (Birmingham to Swindon) how frequent was it?

[thenorthern]

When Virgin Trains first started they had he VT0 route which ran from Birmingham to Swindon via the Golden Valley Line. It of course ended in 2003.

How frequent were the services along the route and did it always run from Birmingham to Swindon?

It always seemed like a route that Virgin CrossCountry didn't want to run as it didn't seem as important as the other routes and it used Class 158s which were never repained into Virgin livery.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Almost certainly a relic from the more integrated BR days, combining a Birmingham- Gloucester and Glucester-Swindon service that happened to be part of the same diagram. The BR cross country services included a lot of oddities - Paddington to paddington via Banbury, Birmingham, Worcester and Oxford. or Paddington to Glasgow via Oxford. No-one in their right mind would use these end-to-end, but they were useful for all sorts of intermediate journeys.

 

[The exile]

Almost certainly a relic from the more integrated BR days, combining a Birmingham- Gloucester and Glucester-Swindon service that happened to be part of the same diagram. The BR cross country services included a lot of oddities - Paddington to paddington via Banbury, Birmingham, Worcester and Oxford. or Paddington to Glasgow via Oxford. No-one in their right mind would use these end-to-end, but they were useful for all sorts of intermediate journeys.

Think it was a more deliberate attempt at creating a route than that. Looks as if it may well reappear as part of the Midlands Hub.
The Worcester Circulars had nothing to do with BR cross country services - they were WR Intercity services. I’ll give you the Hull to Paddington as an oddity for operational convenience though (or was the other way round - I know it was one way only).

 

[45Fox]

I’ll give you the Hull to Paddington as an oddity for operational convenience though (or was the other way round - I know it was one way only).

Paddington to Hull. I vaguely remember it having a portion for Leeds at one time.

 

[Class 317]

This was an operation princess addition and was part of an ambition to run Paddington to Birmingham via Swindon and Cheltenham as an ORCATs raid on GW.

Planned to operate with 2 + 5 Challenger HST's but fell through in the post princess meltdown.