Was that 0715 arr at Euston or 0715 dep from MK?
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Can GBR bring XC back up to INTERCITY standard?
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Was that 0715 arr at Euston or 0715 dep from MK?
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
0715 dep MKC or thereabouts (might have been anywhere from 0713 to 0717 or so). My favourite though was the 0656 which tended to be the Pretendolino set (expected 0659 if it was due to the 110mph speed!)
The point was that the southbound commuter flows were shared between Virgin and LM (as it was then), northbound it was mostly LM hence the cleaner morning pattern and much messier evening one.
On an 80x, you could get 36 first class seats in the end coach, even with 2 wheelchair spaces without the kitchen. That then enables a shop, which is a better use of an equivalent space than a kitchen.
Vending machines are perfect on routes such as Stansted to Birmingham. On the other hand, one should be able to have a meal on a trip between Bournemouth and Manchester. There's an affordable solution to do that and it is to simply heat up premade meals at a shop kiosk. Potentially there is an opportunity for franchising of said onboard shop kiosks.
The solution to XC overcrowding isn't to turn XC into commuter trains, it's to provide slightly longer trains. I don't really care about end doors vs doors at thirds, but single leaf doors are more space efficient.
The 745 is effectively the perfect intercity train for the UK, even if the seats are somewhat tight for some. However low floor trains (especially Stadler) require expensive depot refurbishments.
People can make informed choices whether to book Manchester - Bournemouth. Quite frankly there is only enough space on Cross Country to carry the section of that kind of long-distance demand that choose rail as a distress purchase. There's no point in attracting any more of them as there's no capacity. Is the shop going to make money? Would the train be earning more money if that space was used to carry more fare-paying passengers? My understanding is on-train catering often runs at a loss in itself. It's only provided when its presence would encourage people to travel by rail who otherwise wouldn't. Where you need to fill spare capacity on high-yielding flows of course you do that, or indeed if most of your journeys are 2-4 hours then catering is essential for the majority of passengers.
Yes, because the incredibly shortsighted decision to single the track in many key areas including large stretches between Birmingham and Manchester.
But the problem isn’t COV-WVH, it’s at least as far as Stoke and often to/from Manchester that the XC services will be full and standing, not all day but for several hours of the day and even Stoke-Cov is over an hour. Unfortunately there is no ‘local’ alternatives for much Stoke passengers.
So increase capacity then! That's the point of this thread - can we make XC an attractive choice for people and give them a reason to travel by rail. Secondly, it seems to me that rail operators have no interest in their catering operations, and if they did they would be able to both increase the proportion of food value consumed onboard that is purchased onboard, and increase the total value consumed onboard. The railway could easily provide actual meals with current resources.
System of order and pay online, meal heated up, meal distributed via trolley or from cafe.
A cafe system has lower staffing costs than a trolley+kitchen, since only 1 staff member is needed.
Another strategy would be to be a franchisee of a well known brand and use that to drive revenue.
I don't think they count as core CrossCountry routes either, but is anywhere between Birmingham New Street and Cambridge or Gloucester and Newport single-track?
Looking at where rolling stock is sloshing around, the most likely form of additional capacity is probably more five-car trains, and this country's history of providing reliable catering on five-car units isn't great. You have intermediate nose cars so that's already space wasted, then you need duplicate resources to provide services in both units - of course you could open run one shop but there's no guarantee passengers would organise themselves into the right unit.
HSTEd
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The margins on food service are incredibly tight.
I don't think any reasonable UK guage train can fit enough customers aboard to make even a single staff member catering system worth it.
Fundamentally only a small portion of a few hundred people will actually want food, but the staff member is stuck there for the whole journey.
The competition with fixed catering installations in and near stations is just too intense.
An XC service is likely to get through 3 rotations of passengers on the course of a staff shift. Assuming that the train is 50% full on average that gives a potential clientele of 750 passengers. Let's assume that of these, 20% buy food or drink and the average spend is £5. This means revenue is £750. Let's assume that the cost of the 1 staff member is £200 (effectively minimum wage for 8 hours X2)
Assuming the actual cost of the sold products per passenger is £3, that then still means there is £100 of profit. The issues are often that there is multiple staffing, alongside the lack of higher value items that drive revenue (meals). Serving meals enables much higher margins, than if just snacks and coffee are sold, reheated food can be surprisingly good.
On the other hand, some rail food operations are run without hope of making a profit, like RegioJet, which as an OA operator must be doing it for commercial reasons, and is able to provide me with a bottle of beer and a slice of cake for around £1.50.
Killingworth
Established Member
It's probably too early to know how well TPE are doing with their hot food catering in 1st class on some services. Sounds good but not practical on my South Pennine trains.
They're using a much smaller galley for it than the kitchen on 80x, 50% smaller than the smallest 80x kitchen, and that is substantially smaller than the kitchen on GWR and LNER 9 car units, which are effectively just a massive waste of space, could happen if the 185s are retired.
Financially the WC kitchen operation is completely unviable. If it were charged for and open to all passengers, it could be viable, but given the fact there already was a first class host, the cost/benefit of providing hot food is probably positive overall. The issue is dedicated staff members for 24 people in first class, which isn't viable regardless of if they're giving coffee worth 10p or a hot sausage roll that's worth £2.
tbtc
Veteran Member
There's an interesting discussion here. Could GBR bring Cross Country DOWN to the standards it experienced under British Rail?
Presumably some people have (conveniently?) forgotten how bad it was in the BR days. After all, Virgin named their transformation "Operation Princess", given how much of a "Cinderella" it had become compared to the rest of InterCity
Irregular trains, complicated routes, BR's Cross Country was only really attractive to the demographic who were willing to wait all day for the one direct train between some far flung places (great for the "stick granny on the train" market, but most people won't base their entire day's plans around it)
It was like a train service designed by a committee, trying to tick several boxes and therefore not much use as a service to most, reminiscent of the kind of meandering bus routes that councils used to run forty years ago.
(In fairness, it was occasionally useful for me as a student, the kind of person you might now call "time rich but cash poor", able to base my plans around a daily service, but that's not how most people will want to travel in the 2020s)
Birmingham to Bristol meant a reversal at Gloucester*
Birmingham to Preston/ Glasgow saw a significant amount of trains threaded through Castlefield to try to additionally tick the "Birmingham to Manchester" and "Manchester to Glasgow" boxes), or even via Lime Street to tick the "Liverpool" boxes
A simple journey like Sheffield to York saw many trains running via Doncaster AND Leeds, to try to serve those markets, making the railway an unattractive option
Edinburgh only had three (?) Cross Country trains a day to Newcastle etc - essentially placing journeys for the handful of Craigentinny HSTs (much like the way MM/ EMT only really served Leeds because some of their stock was based at Neville Hill
It was a mess, and had been for a long time. Great fun for certain enthusiasts who enjoy quirky services, but well past it's sell by date
But maybe there's something to be said for dumbing down and going back to the BR days of 90mph trains (remembering that it was mainly operated by 47s, some 158s, plus also some HSTs, a handful of 86s), for the simple reason that it would have been much easier for the franchise to obtain new (or cascaded) stock
Great though the transformation was, vastly speeding up journeys, increased frequency etc, creating a timetable based exclusively on 125mph tilting diesel trains effectively forced XC into decades of being stuck with Voyagers (the government wouldn't back the plans to extend them to a proper length, Bombardier didn't have the jigs any more, not a lot of second hand trains capable of matching Voyager paths - AIUI the token number of HSTs that Arriva got had to be kept to paths avoiding certain stops to help them keep pace with Voyagers)
Virgin were a victim of their own success. The boost to passenger numbers (when you increase frequencies, simplify timetables, speed journeys up) meant something needed to be done to keep the virtuous circle. Instead, the government wouldn't back them (and Branson/ Souter were understandably reluctant to purchase specialist trains for the Management Contact that HMG had converted the franchise into in 2002)
In contrast, Midland Mainline (who inherited another neglected bit of InterCity) had a similar initial investment but were then allowed to replace their two coach 170s with three coach examples, then replace these with four coach 222s - imagine if VXC had had similar sustained backing?
If Virgin had gone for something less-flashy (less fast, less tilty), like four coach 170s, it'd have been much easier for them to order new trains from the conveyor belt of Turbostars that were being built over a decade or so (175s etc if you'd prefer), or at least competed for any potential cascades of DMUs like 158s. Short formations might have been dealt with incrementally (much easier to keep marginally increasing your capacity to match demand if you've a bigger range of trains to choose from)
However, given the way that Cross Country interacts with most major lines, once their timetable was built around 125mph tilting stock, there was no way back, no scope to tag on to orders of other DMUs
They were stuck with specialist DMUs that they couldn't easily replace, with timetables that would only have worked with trains that were equally specialist (and that's an operation that went from only around five years of being a proper franchise to being a Management Contact to being kicked into the long grass under Arriva, too tough and expensive for anyone to do anything meaningful to, which seems a recurring theme of Cross Country)
Laughable though the 158s may have been for long distance journeys, maybe keeping standards DOWN to what they were under British Rail might not have been such a bad idea, and a 90/100mph operation might have been better in hindsight
(* - Did some services go via Worcester too, or was that just the Provincial trains from Birmingham to Cardiff?)
Presumably some people have (conveniently?) forgotten how bad it was in the BR days. After all, Virgin named their transformation "Operation Princess", given how much of a "Cinderella" it had become compared to the rest of InterCity
Irregular trains, complicated routes, BR's Cross Country was only really attractive to the demographic who were willing to wait all day for the one direct train between some far flung places (great for the "stick granny on the train" market, but most people won't base their entire day's plans around it)
It was like a train service designed by a committee, trying to tick several boxes and therefore not much use as a service to most, reminiscent of the kind of meandering bus routes that councils used to run forty years ago.
(In fairness, it was occasionally useful for me as a student, the kind of person you might now call "time rich but cash poor", able to base my plans around a daily service, but that's not how most people will want to travel in the 2020s)
Birmingham to Bristol meant a reversal at Gloucester*
Birmingham to Preston/ Glasgow saw a significant amount of trains threaded through Castlefield to try to additionally tick the "Birmingham to Manchester" and "Manchester to Glasgow" boxes), or even via Lime Street to tick the "Liverpool" boxes
A simple journey like Sheffield to York saw many trains running via Doncaster AND Leeds, to try to serve those markets, making the railway an unattractive option
Edinburgh only had three (?) Cross Country trains a day to Newcastle etc - essentially placing journeys for the handful of Craigentinny HSTs (much like the way MM/ EMT only really served Leeds because some of their stock was based at Neville Hill
It was a mess, and had been for a long time. Great fun for certain enthusiasts who enjoy quirky services, but well past it's sell by date
But maybe there's something to be said for dumbing down and going back to the BR days of 90mph trains (remembering that it was mainly operated by 47s, some 158s, plus also some HSTs, a handful of 86s), for the simple reason that it would have been much easier for the franchise to obtain new (or cascaded) stock
Great though the transformation was, vastly speeding up journeys, increased frequency etc, creating a timetable based exclusively on 125mph tilting diesel trains effectively forced XC into decades of being stuck with Voyagers (the government wouldn't back the plans to extend them to a proper length, Bombardier didn't have the jigs any more, not a lot of second hand trains capable of matching Voyager paths - AIUI the token number of HSTs that Arriva got had to be kept to paths avoiding certain stops to help them keep pace with Voyagers)
Virgin were a victim of their own success. The boost to passenger numbers (when you increase frequencies, simplify timetables, speed journeys up) meant something needed to be done to keep the virtuous circle. Instead, the government wouldn't back them (and Branson/ Souter were understandably reluctant to purchase specialist trains for the Management Contact that HMG had converted the franchise into in 2002)
In contrast, Midland Mainline (who inherited another neglected bit of InterCity) had a similar initial investment but were then allowed to replace their two coach 170s with three coach examples, then replace these with four coach 222s - imagine if VXC had had similar sustained backing?
If Virgin had gone for something less-flashy (less fast, less tilty), like four coach 170s, it'd have been much easier for them to order new trains from the conveyor belt of Turbostars that were being built over a decade or so (175s etc if you'd prefer), or at least competed for any potential cascades of DMUs like 158s. Short formations might have been dealt with incrementally (much easier to keep marginally increasing your capacity to match demand if you've a bigger range of trains to choose from)
However, given the way that Cross Country interacts with most major lines, once their timetable was built around 125mph tilting stock, there was no way back, no scope to tag on to orders of other DMUs
They were stuck with specialist DMUs that they couldn't easily replace, with timetables that would only have worked with trains that were equally specialist (and that's an operation that went from only around five years of being a proper franchise to being a Management Contact to being kicked into the long grass under Arriva, too tough and expensive for anyone to do anything meaningful to, which seems a recurring theme of Cross Country)
Laughable though the 158s may have been for long distance journeys, maybe keeping standards DOWN to what they were under British Rail might not have been such a bad idea, and a 90/100mph operation might have been better in hindsight
(* - Did some services go via Worcester too, or was that just the Provincial trains from Birmingham to Cardiff?)
HSTEd
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Probably would have been easier to sell the Treasury on additional Turbostars than Voyager vehicles to be sure, especially as they could have been bought a handful at a time over the first few years.
Plus a three car turbostar matches a four car Voyager in real capacity.
A 10/12-car Sprinter/Turbostar lashup on busy trains would have capacity that no Voyager formation can hope to match.
Apologies, I should have been clearer; I meant single track in each direction.
Your maths is being fairly generous. On XC services I use where the trolley gets through the train is say that less than 10% of passengers actually make a purchase, which massively cuts your revenue.
Each passenger spending £5 means £4.16 revenue when you account for VAT (possibly interesting debate about whether trolley and/or shop service count as ‘takeaway’ which may save you some of that VAT but very off topic!).
Are rail catering staff on minimum wage? Perhaps that’s why you doubled it, but that doubling also has to account for other staff costs (employer NI, pension contributions, uniform and other expenses). And don’t forget the infrastructure required, procurement, logistics, capital costs etc.
As a regular user between the Southwest and Scotland at the time:
Some Bristol - Birmingham ICs reversed at Gloucester but by no means all. Without them, Gloucester would have been very poorly served.
I don’t ever remember going via Leeds and Doncaster - in fact going back far enough, neither was served until subsidence caused the routes through the middle to be so slow that diverting via Doncaster not only improved connectivity but was also quicker.
For many years Edinburgh’s cross country services ran principally via the WCML.
The principle of standardising routes and increasing frequency was a good one. The idea that you can do so with considerably shorter trains without overcrowding because people will conveniently alter their habits to spread out across the new services had already been shown to be wrong. Probably works quite well when the interval is already short compared to the distance travelled but otherwise it takes a very long time to flatten out.
I've heard it said that nothing increases passenger numbers as effectively as increased frequency. And XC has shown that to be the case.
That is a matter of opinion. I used XC in the BR and the (operationally similar) early Virgin days and IMX the overcrowding was less severe than it has been since.
Reading-Birmingham for much of the 80s and 90s I believe had more capacity than currently. Roughly hourly service (as now, AFAIK) but longer trains.
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In a minority of cases. Plenty went direct avoiding Gloucester looking at the 1982 timetable. Indeed I travelled from Bristol-Birmingham a few times during late BR and the similar early Virgin period (in other words during the 90s) and the trains always went direct, calling at Bristol Parkway and Cheltenham only. Generally HSTs, the odd 47-hauled formation.
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But in what way was the service worse? I used Reading-Birmingham (originating from Guildford or Southampton, sometimes only using XC from Reading) a number of times in the 80s and especially the second half of the 90s (Virgin, yes, but similar operationally) and it really wasn't bad.
Some years it wasn't exact clockface, admittedly, but they did settle into a standard pattern xx06 off New Street in later BR / early Virgin years. Southampton northwards was generally xx50, with some gaps, but most hours there was a service - and of course the HSTs and 47-hauled rakes were longer trains.
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Good points well made.
A railway geared towards the 'time rich but cash poor' segment isn't a good use of finite resources. If Operation Princess did represent a pivot towards a shorter distance market (whether by accident or by design) which improved Cross Country's finances, then however imperfectly executed it was, it was an economically efficient move.
It seems many people are simply guided by their own rose tinted nostalgia and are forgetting the railway is there to serve the real economy.
Particularly (I would imagine) in the short to medium distance range (eg Cheltenham to Bristol or Birmingham). If you’re travelling from Edinburgh to Plymouth you’re probably writing the day off anyway so frequency (even timing within a couple of hours as long as both departure and arrival are “civilised”) is of considerably less importance
As I said, it's a matter of opinion. I generally liked the XC of the 80s and 90s, I recognise it didn't fit the needs of everyone but it did fit the needs of some of us.
It wasn't all about one train per day on certain routes, though it did offer that as well. If you wanted to do Reading-Birmingham in the 80s and 90s, you basically had an hourly service (with more than 1 train per hour in some hours), and with longer trains than now.
Southampton-Birmingham in the 90s had a service most hours, with only a few gaps. IIRC in the late 90s there were services at approximately 0630, 0730, 0950, 1150, 1250, 1450, 1650, 1750, 1850 and 1950 - a decent spread of services and due to the use of mostly HSTs with the odd 47-hauled formation, lots of capacity.
All that said, I will admit I did quite like the actual Operation Princess timetable too which had quite an interesting pattern of service. It's the service that followed Operation Princess that I'm not so impressed with. Virgin weren't a bad TOC, it's their successor which is less impressive - especially the post-Covid period.
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FGWHST43009
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Longer Turbostars could help solve some of the capacity issues, especially on the Cheltenham-Birmingham-Derby corridor. I'm guessing the 170s are SDO fitted so could run a 6 car on Cardiff-Nottingham services and not need to worry about short platforms? I tend to avoid that train on my travels to and from uni because it's only 3 coaches, while connecting at Bristol Parkway for a Voyager, usually trying to get a double, is better because it's a 9 car IET.
Trainbike46
Established Member
As has been discussed many times, the main thing XC needs is more capacity.
The obvious way to provide that in the short term is to take on the remaining 221s, and come up with a solution to stop units being locked out of use*.
The long term solution is to order a fleet of level-boarding, 125-mph, full length (~240m) trimodes, to increase capacity.
Alternatively, a cascade of 5-car 80x from both GWR and LNER would be an option, with those operators getting new trains to increase their fleet sizes.
Given the length of many of the journeys, I do think there is a case for a small buffet on a full-length train. The main thing needed is an increase in capacity
*whether that is increasing staff numbers, or changing the agreements that currently require double manning does not matter for capacity, though one is likely significantly cheaper than the other.
The obvious way to provide that in the short term is to take on the remaining 221s, and come up with a solution to stop units being locked out of use*.
The long term solution is to order a fleet of level-boarding, 125-mph, full length (~240m) trimodes, to increase capacity.
Alternatively, a cascade of 5-car 80x from both GWR and LNER would be an option, with those operators getting new trains to increase their fleet sizes.
Given the length of many of the journeys, I do think there is a case for a small buffet on a full-length train. The main thing needed is an increase in capacity
*whether that is increasing staff numbers, or changing the agreements that currently require double manning does not matter for capacity, though one is likely significantly cheaper than the other.
On another matter, what do people think about the Virgin style of "clockface between nodes, but alternating destinations" versus the current pattern?
The Virgin style involved clockface services between nodes (say Reading and Birmingham) but then services might swap onto other routes. For example from Southampton I remember a 4-hourly pattern Manchester/Newcastle/Glasgow/Newcastle, but you had a regular hourly service as far as Birmingham.
This seemed a good compromise between simple clockface timings and offering a range of through journeys to different destinations, and I have to admit I quite liked it. Certainly from an enthusiast POV it was much more interesting and it did also mean that through services to more far-flung destinations were offered throughout the day, albeit at lower frequency.
I seem to remember Deutsche Bahn operated something a bit like this in 2009-14 (no idea about now, I mention those years as I visited regularly in this period), there might be an hourly service between two "nodes" (large city Hbf stations) but the ultimate destinations varied depending on the hour.
The Virgin style involved clockface services between nodes (say Reading and Birmingham) but then services might swap onto other routes. For example from Southampton I remember a 4-hourly pattern Manchester/Newcastle/Glasgow/Newcastle, but you had a regular hourly service as far as Birmingham.
This seemed a good compromise between simple clockface timings and offering a range of through journeys to different destinations, and I have to admit I quite liked it. Certainly from an enthusiast POV it was much more interesting and it did also mean that through services to more far-flung destinations were offered throughout the day, albeit at lower frequency.
I seem to remember Deutsche Bahn operated something a bit like this in 2009-14 (no idea about now, I mention those years as I visited regularly in this period), there might be an hourly service between two "nodes" (large city Hbf stations) but the ultimate destinations varied depending on the hour.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I wouldn't say alternating between 4 nodes is necessarily going to work very well. It results in the classic "infrequent direct services from everywhere to everywhere" thing which just isn't very practical.
I do quite like the approach you see in Switzerland with 2 nodes, though - the long distance service alternates between the two on a half hourly basis (so hourly to each) and runs fast, while in the other half hour on each a local stopping service operates from the common point. But I think two is the most that is sensible. Barrow and Windermere are probably a better example of this sort of thing than XC though as the split part is generally quite short, and indeed a service on that sort of model did operate in the 2000s, roughly every 2 hours to each destination semifast with a local stopping shuttle in between.
I do quite like the approach you see in Switzerland with 2 nodes, though - the long distance service alternates between the two on a half hourly basis (so hourly to each) and runs fast, while in the other half hour on each a local stopping service operates from the common point. But I think two is the most that is sensible. Barrow and Windermere are probably a better example of this sort of thing than XC though as the split part is generally quite short, and indeed a service on that sort of model did operate in the 2000s, roughly every 2 hours to each destination semifast with a local stopping shuttle in between.
Trainbike46
Established Member
As you say, there are advantages to such an approach. The main disadvantage is that it can import delays between many different regions.
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