Challenges of reorganising services within the GBR operation

[aron2smith]

Moderator note - split from:

C2C upcoming nationalisation.

With the upcoming nationalisation of C2C next Sunday in exactly one week (20/07/2025) i thought that it would be good to start a thread discussing this. I believe this will be the last privatised service: 00:41 London Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness 01:45 I believe this will be the first...

www.railforums.co.uk

Surprised it hasn't leaked on here.

c2c, Greater Anglia and Network Rail (Anglia Region) will be brought together under one team and then formally merged in 2027.

It will act as a quasi-merged organisation in the meantime led primarily by the GA leadership team.

This makes a lot of sense, but Great Northern (whatever bits don't end up in London Overground) should also join the Anglia region. Especially at the King's Lynn end, it really does seems separate in the most artificial way possible.

Has anyone reported on what you have said yet? First I've heard of this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Aug 2025 ==

So a region, rather than a sector, structure for the rest of GBR looks pretty much nailed on then? Good! XC and Thameslink to be divvied up accordingly?

Maybe that would happen but given how Crosscountry and Thameslink work, I don't think it's a good idea to split either up.

Crosscountry doesn't even have a terminus of its own, Birmingham probably as close to one it gets, but really it acts like the Intercity operator that connects all the towns and cities whilst avoiding going through London. Transpennine very much acting like a Northern version of this setup. If GBR doesn't keep all Intercity routes as a separate sector, that would be a mistake.

Thameslink in many ways shows how hard it can be to define a large commuter area. Most of it is across London but it goes far beyond it in many ways, that it probably wouldn't make sense for it to come under a bigger TFL or even a South East Regional Transport Authority. As it is, it offers many unique journeys only possible thanks to the Snow Hill Tunnel, breaking up Thameslink would fragment its identity. But say TFL gets what it wants with controlling all stopping rail services in and near London, Thameslink will be the clear link between the Overground, Underground and Regional and Intercity railways. The central section feels very much like a proto-crossrail/ crossrail 0. Rather than break it up, bring back Network South East, Thameslink could be a sector within it then. Same with Anglia, Southern and Kent, Chiltern and Thames Valley, South Western etc.

 

[Flinn Reed]

Maybe that would happen but given how Crosscountry and Thameslink work, I don't think it's a good idea to split either up.

Crosscountry doesn't even have a terminus of its own, Birmingham probably as close to one it gets, but really it acts like the Intercity operator that connects all the towns and cities whilst avoiding going through London. Transpennine very much acting like a Northern version of this setup. If GBR doesn't keep all Intercity routes as a separate sector, that would be a mistake.

Thameslink in many ways shows how hard it can be to define a large commuter area. Most of it is across London but it goes far beyond it in many ways, that it probably wouldn't make sense for it to come under a bigger TFL or even a South East Regional Transport Authority. As it is, it offers many unique journeys only possible thanks to the Snow Hill Tunnel, breaking up Thameslink would fragment its identity. But say TFL gets what it wants with controlling all stopping rail services in and near London, Thameslink will be the clear link between the Overground, Underground and Regional and Intercity railways. The central section feels very much like a proto-crossrail/ crossrail 0. Rather than break it up, bring back Network South East, Thameslink could be a sector within it then. Same with Anglia, Southern and Kent, Chiltern and Thames Valley, South Western etc.

I think there would be some advantages of splitting up Crosscountry and Thameslink (as well as some individual services within other franchises), but would not be possible without some major infrastructure changes, as there isn't the capacity to terminate more trains at London and Birmingham.

I think the Elizabeth Line demonstrates how Thameslink would work best, in terms of distance. To the south of London, this would mean a simpler swap between which services go through the core, and which go into terminal stations, but to the north the Bedford services would be an issue. With current discussion of an increase in Channel Tunnel services, a long term aspiration could be to divert HS1 to new platforms (perhaps Underground), and use the current Eurostar terminals to increase MML services (like how Waterloo has been reused). Or an alternative could be to just expand the low level station at St Pancras, adding some terminal platforms alongside A and B, which could run Bedford services plus divert the Corby/Luton Express there.

Splitting some XC routes would definitely help improve reliability. If the proposals to expand Moor Street Station (and build new curves linking to other routes) were to go ahead, this could allow services to terminate in Birmingham. While the current services do offer the convenience of having a direct train between certain destinations, I think it would be better overall to have to make an additional change of train but each section running more reliably.

 

[JonathanH]

Or an alternative could be to just expand the low level station at St Pancras, adding some terminal platforms alongside A and B, which could run Bedford services plus divert the Corby/Luton Express there.

Is that in any way straightforward given the presence of other foundations around there? With the Crick Institute and British Library on one side, St Pancras Station on the other, and underground below I can't imagine there is a lot of space for expansion?

I think the Elizabeth Line demonstrates how Thameslink would work best, in terms of distance. To the south of London, this would mean a simpler swap between which services go through the core, and which go into terminal stations, but to the north the Bedford services would be an issue.

It is, as you acknowledge, more complicated than just building terminal platforms. Passengers get used to the ability to travel beyond the terminal stations so just taking that away wouldn't be universally popular. Thameslink seems to have been all about building the capacity to get 12 coach trains into London without having to construct terminal platforms.

While the current services do offer the convenience of having a direct train between certain destinations, I think it would be better overall to have to make an additional change of train but each section running more reliably.

Possibly true. It does seem complicated, if GBR does want a regional structure, to set up neat and tidy regions for all services, with CrossCountry and Thameslink both posing distinct challenges.

In the parent thread it was suggested that CrossCountry might be a co-operstion between the regional structures. I'm not so sure that Thameslink works in the same way.

 

[swt_passenger]

Just leave Thameslink with Southern. But put GN into Kings Cross with the east coast operator The future railway won’t always divide into neat logical divisions, just like the current setup. As there’ll always be services going well outside the normal operating area, whether it’s divided into a sectors, routes, or regions there’ll always be anomalies.

One of the daft aspects of the original Thameslink was constant train crew changeing at Blackfriars, because like taxi drivers some of them didn’t go south of the river. The whole point of the Thameslink programme in the 2000s was to remove as much of the ‘terminating in London’ aspects as possible, to allow for 24 tph in the core. London Bridge was rebuilt to allow 18 tph through the core. So should it be rebuilt again? I don’t think anyone would suggest that, so the services have to go through.

I bet there are sound reasons for not increasing terminating services at Birmingham, the planned infrastructure changes are mainly to local services - although I’d agree with including “XC-lite” (former Central Trains) in that process.

 

[StephenHunter]

LTS and GE were never combined even under Grouping; they ended up under LMS and LNER respectively.

 

[Magdalia]

The place to start here is the infrastructure not the trains.

The Network Rail Anglia Region is notably self contained, and I would not change it. Ignoring the freight links off the North London Line it only has 2 boundaries for passenger trains: just north of Royston and just east of Peterborough.

if GBR does want a regional structure, to set up neat and tidy regions for all services

In summary, the infrastructure definition of Anglia is very neat and tidy.

Thameslink only runs on Anglia metals for a very short distance, the Brighton trains north of Royston, and the Peterborough trains don't make it onto Anglia metals at all. These are clearly not Anglia.

Many Great Northern trains do not run on Anglia metals at all, the Cambridge stoppers only run on Anglia metals for a very short distance north of Royston. These are clearly not Anglia.

The fast Kings Cross-Cambridge/Ely/Kings Lynn service predominantly serves Anglia stations. In an ideal world it would be disentangled from the rest of Great Northern and given to Anglia, but I'm not convinced it would be worth the disruption. It wouldn't be at the top of my priority list.

Readers of various other discussions here will know what I think about the Peterborough boundary. This is where I think GBR can benefit the railway in East Anglia. The existing Cross Country and East Midlands routes should both be split, with Anglia taking over the east end legs. The first stage would probably need to be Norwich-Nottingham and Stansted-Peterborough, the second stage would be to do a swap to have Norwich-Peterborough and Stansted-Nottingham. A less disruptive option would be to continue to run East Anglia-Birmingham, but with Anglia operating the trains.

This would involve disruption too, but in this case I do think it would be worth the effort. Having trains in East Anglia run from many miles away is crazy now that East Anglia is growing fast both economically and demographically. The Anglia region needs to be in charge of what runs Stansted-Peterborough and Norwich-Peterborough.

With these changes the trains can be neat and tidy too.

 

[eldomtom2]

LTS and GE were never combined even under Grouping; they ended up under LMS and LNER respectively.

Of course one of the first organisational changes BR made was to move the LTS from the London Midland Region to the Eastern Region, and Fenchurch Street itself was a GER station.

 

[stevieinselby]

It is, as you acknowledge, more complicated than just building terminal platforms. Passengers get used to the ability to travel beyond the terminal stations so just taking that away wouldn't be universally popular. Thameslink seems to have been all about building the capacity to get 12 coach trains into London without having to construct terminal platforms.

Cross-city services like Thameslink, the Elizabeth Line and pretty much the whole of the London Underground are better than terminal stations around the periphery of central London for both passengers and operational efficiency. It increases the number of places passengers can reach without needing to change onto another service or mode, and it reduces the pressure on space that is a major issue with terminating trains – it's far better for everyone to have trains running through central London and then fanning out to a large number of stations in the outer suburbs and surrounding towns where each terminus only has to deal with maybe 4 to 6 terminating trains per hour, rather than trying to juggle platform allocations and a congested station throat for 30 trains in and out per hour as Waterloo does. It might mean that divvying up train services into business units that look neat on a map doesn't work quite as well, but there is absolutely no case for removing those through services. (That isn't to say that there may not be a case for rationalising them on some lines, but that's a different question)

 

[StephenHunter]

Of course one of the first organisational changes BR made was to move the LTS from the London Midland Region to the Eastern Region, and Fenchurch Street itself was a GER station.

They were kept as separate divisions though.

 

[Magdalia]

They were kept as separate divisions though.

In the late 1950s the Eastern Region did not have divisions, it had Line Traffic Managers. At that stage the LTS had its own Line Traffic Manager, J W Dedman.

In 1962 J W Dedman became Line Manager Great Eastern but including the LTS. There was then a return to divisions in 1964, with the LTS coming under Liverpool Street.

Up to 1965 the senior management are listed in each ER public timetable.