Cross-country overcrowding: what could be done?

[Bletchleyite]

And to be fair so doesn’t Chiltern (but apparently has enough to run the EWR)

They have received new units from WMT to run East West Rail, it is not being resourced from their existing fleet.

 

[takno]

Skipping Wakefield Westgate makes sense, there should be enough capacity between there and Leeds with the LNER and Northern services, plus the additional Northern services from Kirkgate, plus the buses. XC calling there just acts as a "fig leaf" for Northern to continue running 2-car Sprinters on the Sheffield service.
Worcestershire Parkway I don't know enough about, but are there really enough people travelling from there that it overwhelms the XC services?
Not serving Taunton would be a poor move though, unless there's an increase in the GWR services to Bristol. It doesn't really compare with Wakefield where the XC services are doing a job that should be done by the local operator- Taunton is a railhead for large swathes of Somerset & North Devon. If XC stopped calling at Wakefield people will change at Leeds instead. If they stop calling at Taunton people will get on the M5.

Worcestershire Parkway is doing pretty well, and overwhelmingly with passengers to Birmingham. In that case it's a combination of it not really being an interchange for anywhere very large (it's as easy to change at Birmingham or Cheltenham for Worcester), the fact that it's a new stop and the last thing an 8 hour journey needs is more stops, and the short-distance nature of the passengers.

Taunton isn't somewhere you want to stop calling. The aim is to stop having to deal with Bristol-Taunton passengers, which can probably be better achieved with a combination of GWR-only tickets and raising the price of the open tickets.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Taunton isn't somewhere you want to stop calling. The aim is to stop having to deal with Bristol-Taunton passengers, which can probably be better achieved with a combination of GWR-only tickets and raising the price of the open tickets.

Bristol to Taunton isn't really comparable with Leeds to Wakefield though- it's near enough 50 miles between the two places. It would make sense for there to be a more usable GWR stopper on the route, but until there is you can't really begrudge passengers for preferring the faster service.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Another point to make about the Bristol to Exeter corridor is that there must be huge latent demand given how busy the M5 often is. We cant just be thinking about current loadings on XC, we also should be thinking about people who current don't use the train but who we should be pushing to do so.

 

[takno]

Bristol to Taunton isn't really comparable with Leeds to Wakefield though- it's near enough 50 miles between the two places. It would make sense for there to be a more usable GWR stopper on the route, but until there is you can't really begrudge passengers for preferring the faster service.

I don't begrudge anybody preferring the faster service - I'd always catch it myself if it was available and the same price. The problem is that 50 miles is still a pretty short low-value journey when it's taking seats away from passengers who are going 400 miles or more. You do need to improve the GWR service, if nothing else because I'm not sure all the Taunton passengers would fit on it.

 

[brad465]

Bristol to Taunton isn't really comparable with Leeds to Wakefield though- it's near enough 50 miles between the two places. It would make sense for there to be a more usable GWR stopper on the route, but until there is you can't really begrudge passengers for preferring the faster service.

Taunton isn't somewhere you want to stop calling. The aim is to stop having to deal with Bristol-Taunton passengers, which can probably be better achieved with a combination of GWR-only tickets and raising the price of the open tickets.

XC do Taunton-Bristol in 30-32 minutes; the GWR stopper is about 59-70 minutes depending on calling pattern and dwell time. That is an enormous difference in journey time and for all XC's problems, getting them to skip Taunton all of a sudden will cause outrage. If you want Taunton to be skipped, XC need to be 2tph down to Exeter, where 1tph can skip Taunton and maybe also Tiverton Pkwy, and GWR need an additional tph between Bristol and Exeter that is at least semi-fast - such as Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, Bridgwater, Taunton, Tiverton (or Wellington and Cullompton instead of here), Exeter.

 

[35B]

I don't begrudge anybody preferring the faster service - I'd always catch it myself if it was available and the same price. The problem is that 50 miles is still a pretty short low-value journey when it's taking seats away from passengers who are going 400 miles or more. You do need to improve the GWR service, if nothing else because I'm not sure all the Taunton passengers would fit on it.

That cuts to the heart of the issue of using XC to provide core services, rather than act as a long distance overlay. However, I'm not sure that dropping Taunton because it's used by people travelling from Bristol (and Exeter) is the right answer when it's also a railhead for a large area.

 

[cle]

Bristol - Taunton - Exeter is very different to Leeds-Wakefield (which is well-served tbh) - which is more like a Stockport-Manc or Wolves-Brum dynamic. But Wakefield is smaller / less of an origin place re population than the others...

People travel in both ways from Taunton (on XC services) - as well as obviously to London. Exeter is a big draw in addition to Bristol. And everything is further apart, so the railhead factor is larger too (also Tiverton applies to all of this).

West Yorkshire is extremely dense and concentrated, with different, poly-directional patterns as well as Leeds as the big draw.

 

[William3000]

That cuts to the heart of the issue of using XC to provide core services, rather than act as a long distance overlay. However, I'm not sure that dropping Taunton because it's used by people travelling from Bristol (and Exeter) is the right answer when it's also a railhead for a large area.

What percentage of passengers are travelling over 400 miles? Less than 0.5%?

 

[NCT]

The floor of this argument is that if we were a more sensible efficiency-focused country like The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany etc all of the core CrossCountry routes would have been electrified long ago and we wouldn't have to argue about how to replace/supplement highly specialised, thirsty and hard to come by diesel high speed trains. Almost all cross-country style routes in Germany, the best point of comparison operate with 16 carriage ICE 3s or 12/13 carriage ICE 4s. The only unnelectrified railways in the Netherlands and Germany are comparatively rural branch lines. The only Voyager route where the case for electrification is fairly weak is running beyond Plymouth to Penzance.

For all the floors of the CrossCountry's offerings, its great strength is its long distance service offering, providing 2tph from Birmingham to most principle destinations and 1tph to places further a field whilst catering well to cross-Birmingham passengers. It is almost singlehandedly responsible for the growth of passenger numbers that has proven the Voyagers to be inadequate and strengthened the case to electrify all their core routes and order a fleet of conventional 125mph EMUs. For me messing around with the one great virtue of CrossCountry is a dangerous game and we must not lose track of how valuable it is.

For all the strengths of the Dutch railways and its operating model it is not without flaws, especially in regards to long distance services. The only routes that pass through the Netherlands that are as long as the four Voyager routes are international services and they are plagued with the same problems of overcrowding, high ticket prices and unreliability that the Voyager routes see.

The ceiling of this argument is that with the best will in the world Cross Country electrification won't happen this side of 2035. You can wait for perfection or you can turn back the clock in your own head, or you deal with the here and now and deal with the options that are practically and physically available.

 

[cle]

Also surely they make more money on a Plymouth-Newcastle service selling the same seat 3-5 times in churn, than the random 400 mile journey.

What we just need is absolute capacity. Additional services, longer services - vs skipping key stops... maybe some flighting to alleviate/PIXC-busts ahead of XC services.

The Leeds-Wakefield-Sheffield fast shuttle is a perfect example of this. Would be great to see it extended to Nottingham or Derby, also mopping up Chesterfield. These are the flows which fill the trains.

 

[NCT]

Good value for the taxpayer is important, but that doesn't mean making the railway cheap, it means making it more effective as well as financially affordable. The criteria for that are for some debate, perhaps another thread would be good on that.

Good value for the taxpayer (and the fare payer) means using existing resources effectively and making cost decisions based on what actually drives revenue. The core inter-city markets drive revenue and warrant direct trains. Above that it's frequency (effective frequency that's actually perceived by passengers), reliability and crowding relief.

Breaking services where the wires end on mainline services (this isn't Merseyrail) isn't driving things by core markets, it's driving things by operational convenience. Operational convenience should never be the primary driver.

Cross Birmingham flows are so varied that any one flow is incidental - you shouldn't prioritise particular pairings at the expense of reliability.

There are so many ways of providing cheaper fares on London - Birmingham. Only non-takt countries like France and Poland think segmentation with 'poor trains' is a good idea. Through Northampton services don't drive revenue.

There is a choice between Northampton and Birmingham for terminating services. Birmingham is the far more capacity / performance destroying one.

All Eindhoven - Utrecht trains go to Amsterdam. Passengers for Den Haag and Amersfoort change trains at Utrecht. They don't try running 1tph to everywhere. That model could work well for Birmingham.

There are too many sacred cows that various people want to protect, and this just leads to a total decision paralysis. You can't make omelettes if all eggs are sacred.

 

[35B]

What percentage of passengers are travelling over 400 miles? Less than 0.5%?

Over 400 miles - quite possibly. But my suggestion is that the purpose of a Taunton stop is rather more than just serving as a commuter stop for Bristol, which is where the "don't stop XC at Taunton" approach seemed to come from.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2026 ==

There is a choice between Northampton and Birmingham for terminating services. Birmingham is the far more capacity / performance destroying one.

All Eindhoven - Utrecht trains go to Amsterdam. Passengers for Den Haag and Amersfoort change trains at Utrecht. They don't try running 1tph to everywhere. That model could work well for Birmingham.

It could, but that rather neglects the way that the services north and south of Northampton dovetail with each other. Which kind of matters when you're not actually taking anything out of New St, and there's no credible suggestion that this is a particularly contributor to service unreliability.

 

[AndrewE]

Good value for the taxpayer (and the fare payer) means using existing resources effectively and making cost decisions

There is a choice between Northampton and Birmingham for terminating services. Birmingham is the far more capacity / performance destroying one.

All Eindhoven - Utrecht trains go to Amsterdam. Passengers for Den Haag and Amersfoort change trains at Utrecht. They don't try running 1tph to everywhere. That model could work well for Birmingham.

There are too many sacred cows that various people want to protect, and this just leads to a total decision paralysis. You can't make omelettes if all eggs are sacred.

As has been said upthread it is complex, but getting the best outcome for the country out of what we have to work with is the core job of the public sector, and I am thankful that the straightjacket of franchise "contracts" should soon be behind us. It's a pity about the rolling stock ones.

On top of the NE-SW capacity problem what has hardly has any mention here is the need to get diesels out of conurbations and smaller towns too because of the health consequences of continuing emissions. This is why I feel that re-using servicable EMUs to displace Voyagers from Manchester and Brum in the short term is a no-brainer, although admittedly losing through trains from Manc to the S and SW is unfortunate. In the longer term running new bi-mode or BEMUs will re-connect this route. In the meantime cross-platform interchange off an 8-car EMU at Bham international or Coventry (whether on its way to Northampton or not) into a 9-car Voyager would be the least-worst option that I can see.

The "cost" (i.e. practicability) of traction training of XC or route-training of LNR drivers should be analysed and the result used to decide which way to go in the short term.

 

[cle]

The 350s are a good fit - run 8 cars, much like the 2x Liverpool services should be. Even one - would be a great capacity addition.

 

[NCT]

Over 400 miles - quite possibly. But my suggestion is that the purpose of a Taunton stop is rather more than just serving as a commuter stop for Bristol, which is where the "don't stop XC at Taunton" approach seemed to come from.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2026 ==


It could, but that rather neglects the way that the services north and south of Northampton dovetail with each other. Which kind of matters when you're not actually taking anything out of New St, and there's no credible suggestion that this is a particularly contributor to service unreliability.

The Northampton dovetail can be preserved through maintaining interchange times by planning Northampton as a takt node, which for the frequency of trains would not be difficult.

Through trains have lower platform occupations than terminating trains, and if routed efficiently cause fewer platform end conflicts. The opportunity for Birmingham New Street is to operate the Stour and Gloucester lines as completely independent halves, like how Utrecht Centraal is operated like independent systems with no trains crossing from one line to another.

Of course, I have not modelled any of this (this is a speculative thread, I'm not at work) and any serious proposals would have to be properly modelled and assessed. However, every proposal comes from an educated guess of what's likely to perform well and most good proposals originate from a good educated guess.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2026 ==

As has been said upthread it is complex, but getting the best outcome for the country out of what we have to work with is the core job of the public sector, and I am thankful that the straightjacket of franchise "contracts" should soon be behind us. It's a pity about the rolling stock ones.

On top of the NE-SW capacity problem what has hardly has any mention here is the need to get diesels out of conurbations and smaller towns too because of the health consequences of continuing emissions. This is why I feel that re-using servicable EMUs to displace Voyagers from Manchester and Brum in the short term is a no-brainer, although admittedly losing through trains from Manc to the S and SW is unfortunate. In the longer term running new bi-mode or BEMUs will re-connect this route. In the meantime cross-platform interchange off an 8-car EMU at Bham international or Coventry (whether on its way to Northampton or not) into a 9-car Voyager would be the least-worst option that I can see.

The "cost" (i.e. practicability) of traction training of XC or route-training of LNR drivers should be analysed and the result used to decide which way to go in the short term.

It is complex, and any remapping of this kind will have to be supported by a systematic timetable recast to a takt-kind quality applying Dutch principles (not impossible, but it won't be trivial), and some trade-offs will need to be made. The state of the industry and the absence of any political courage probably means such an exercise won't be completed or even attempted this side of 2035, and we are left with plodding along with current mediocrity.

 

[Grecian 1998]

I travel between Exeter and Bristol regularly on various days of the week and various times of day. There are a lot of weekday commuters travelling from Taunton to Bristol between 0700 - 0900 and back between 1645 - 1845 - it usually gets to standing room only unless trains are doubled up. But it only lasts 30 minutes. It might also be busy before and after sporting fixtures at Ashton Gate. At other times the number of passengers travelling purely between those stations is pretty negligible. Certainly if a train's overcrowded on that section of line, it's usually overcrowded between Exeter - Bristol, and Taunton doesn't make much difference.

XC being XC, their overcrowding isn't limited to commuter times - it can happen pretty much any day of the week. As far as XC goes, Taunton is a railhead for a very large area and for the majority of any given week I suspect most passengers are travelling some way beyond Bristol.

 

[zwk500]

The Northampton dovetail can be preserved through maintaining interchange times by planning Northampton as a takt node, which for the frequency of trains would not be difficult.

At the moment the long dwell at Northampton (c.10 mins) functions as an effective service break anyway. However it has the advantage of forming a West Mids - MK stopping service by maintaining the through advertisment.

The two halves of this service need to be half-hourly minimum. The provision of an MK area stopper to the West Mids is also important, although there is an argument that it could be split for 1 half of the hour I would suggest that breaking it outright is not productive. In addition this service forms the only direct services from the intermediate stations between Birmingham International and Coventry, and Long Buckby, to Euston. Reducing or removing these direct links to force change at Coventry or Northampton would lead to a material drop in ridership, especially when the Avanti services are already so heavily used.

Northampton cannot function as a takt node in the Dutch model for the wider rail network because it is bypassed by the fast lines. You would need that role to be taken on by MK (which has limited platform capacity for terminating too many trains at once), or Rugby (which has a restrictive layout for terminating services from Coventry).

 

[NCT]

At the moment the long dwell at Northampton (c.10 mins) functions as an effective service break anyway. However it has the advantage of forming a West Mids - MK stopping service by maintaining the through advertisment.

The two halves of this service need to be half-hourly minimum. The provision of an MK area stopper to the West Mids is also important, although there is an argument that it could be split for 1 half of the hour I would suggest that breaking it outright is not productive. In addition this service forms the only direct services from the intermediate stations between Birmingham International and Coventry, and Long Buckby, to Euston. Reducing or removing these direct links to force change at Coventry or Northampton would lead to a material drop in ridership, especially when the Avanti services are already so heavily used.

Northampton cannot function as a takt node in the Dutch model for the wider rail network because it is bypassed by the fast lines. You would need that role to be taken on by MK (which has limited platform capacity for terminating too many trains at once), or Rugby (which has a restrictive layout for terminating services from Coventry).

In the context of a takt node Northampton only needs arrivals from the north and departures to the south to connect and vice versa. A takt node doesn't in itself mean all trains terminating. At Rugby ideally you want an ex Trent Valley to connect into a Coventry to Northampton (you don't need the reverse connection as Coventry to MK direction has services, but a proper 2tph to everywhere timetable will have to wait after HS2).

And we really shouldn't be dealing with hourly services in the metropolitan areas of England. The Dutch have half-hourly as the minimum building block until they get to Zwolle.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Good value for the taxpayer (and the fare payer) means using existing resources effectively and making cost decisions based on what actually drives revenue.

The former is true. The latter is not. Even if you work it out financially, the benefit to society is what you want to look at. That is, you don't want to get dragged into knowing, as it were, the price of everything and the value of nothing, which the DfT and Treasury are rather good at.

Benefits to society include things like reducing pollution and congestion by taking people out of cars and providing mobility which means employment is easier to access and companies can grow more effectively by being able to employ the skills they need. Thus "bums on seats" is a better measure than revenue. It's not, or rather shouldn't be, simply a means for the Government to make money.

There are so many ways of providing cheaper fares on London - Birmingham. Only non-takt countries like France and Poland think segmentation with 'poor trains' is a good idea. Through Northampton services don't drive revenue.

This is simply untrue. In Germany, a Takt country, it's provided by way of regional services being very cheap, particularly with the Deutschlandticket but even before that with stuff like the Schoenes-Wochenende-Ticket. For years it's been common for less well-off people to make long journeys on regional services because it's cheap, while the ICE is excellent but pricey. It is directly analogous to Avanti vs. WMT on the WCML - the situation with the "cheap and fast vs. expensive and slow" thing is a near textbook copy. Plus Germany has Flixtrain, which is a low frequency budget Open Access operator sort of analogous to Lumo.

Sure, Switzerland and the Netherlands don't have analogies, but they do have affordable (in the former case if you have a Halbtax, but pretty much everyone does, the full fare is basically a tourist tax) mainstream services. I would love us to cut the Anytime Return between London and Birmingham to fifty quid, bringing it into line in real terms (noting that Swiss pay is much higher than here) with fares in CH with Halbtax*, but it's just not happening. Thus you need to provide for the market that can't afford over a hundred, and for short journeys booking well in advance isn't the solution, because your car doesn't require booking in advance. (Note not to conflate booking in advance with Advance fares - the regional operators that offer these tend to off them at low prices close to departure). This is different to London-Edinburgh, where almost nobody makes that journey on a whim, and almost everyone knows they'll be making it a month or more ahead.

* It's an outrageous £197 at the moment, which is closer to what London-Manchester would be if per mile the fares were the same as London-Edinburgh's Anytime fare. Even Chiltern's is a still totally unreasonable £148.40.

There are too many sacred cows that various people want to protect, and this just leads to a total decision paralysis. You can't make omelettes if all eggs are sacred.

Services with high loadings are providing significant societal benefit. You don't mess them up, least of all established ones that have existed for 30+ years (albeit with a gap), just because you want to introduce utterly pointless alternative through services like Manchester to Northampton which would carry fresh air south of Birmingham outside of peak commuter times. You'd be better off finding somewhere to shove a reversing siding between New St and Stechford than doing that. Indeed, could you reverse that Manchester EMU service *at* Stechford? It's got a third platform that's basically unused, it wouldn't need to carry passengers between New St and there...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2026 ==

It is complex, and any remapping of this kind will have to be supported by a systematic timetable recast to a takt-kind quality applying Dutch principles (not impossible, but it won't be trivial), and some trade-offs will need to be made. The state of the industry and the absence of any political courage probably means such an exercise won't be completed or even attempted this side of 2035, and we are left with plodding along with current mediocrity.

The south WCML is very close to being Takt, though it isn't perfectly so (for instance the fast calls before the slow at Bletchley which means a 25 minute wait if you want to connect from say Wolverton to local stations south). I'm not sure I would be directing my ire at the lack of Takt there, as it's close to as good as the UK gets.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2026 ==

That cuts to the heart of the issue of using XC to provide core services, rather than act as a long distance overlay.

There is an element of deciding what XC should be here, and the answer might be in splitting it up in terms of that role. Long distance through trains have their own benefits, and they exist in other countries too, even Takt ones (Germany's IC/ICE network is very analogous to XC, and it also includes odd one-off through services too) but should we actually consider having a lower frequency (say 2-hourly) long distance XC network more similar to what went before, with high quality, high comfort trains with quality on board service intended for long distance use, and limited stops, perhaps even with compulsory reservation to discourage local use, and also add some more frequent, more local overlays with more stops using units designed for fast passenger turnover?

So for instance you might have a two-hourly Penzance to Edinburgh via the ECML, and a two hourly Glasgow to Reading via Manchester and the WCML, all using end doored units with a very low density layout like the Avanti 80x plus perhaps even something like a restaurant car, but also a more frequent Oxford to Manchester overlay with more stops using units more like bimode 730/2s and a tea trolley at most? Similarly also a Bristol to Leeds overlay on the other bit of the X?

You could argue for that same idea on TPE (ish) too as it's analogous to XC in many ways, only not being part of it for political reasons relating to funding - 2tph fast Liverpool-Newcastle (calling at say Lime St, Manchester Oxford Road/Picc, Leeds, York, possibly Darlington/Durham and Newcastle only) would be about the only true intercity service it operates, the rest plus the Liverpool-Norwich being local overlays of various kinds that also provide "long, thin" through services by carrying a lot of intermediate passengers too?

 

[tbtc]

1. Some stopping restrictions on XC seem reasonable, e.g. not carrying passengers between just Stockport and Manchester. Wakefield is different though. It's a city in its own right, as well as a railhead for chunks of West Yorkshire

2. I completely agree with the idea of using some of the surplus of 100/110mph EMUs to run a Manchester - Birmingham - Northampton service. I'd be tempted to go one further and have one subfleet providing a fifteen minute Stafford - Wolverhampton - Birmingham - International service, starting back at Liverpool/ Manchester every half hour and extending to Northampton every half hour (doesn't really matter whether the Northampton services start at Liverpool or Manchester, operationally you might even interworks them) - cutting the Rugely services to just New Street, and the Euston services at Northampton

3. Yes, that probably means an end to the many £9/11/12 tickets for London - Birmingham (based on fares for Wednesday morning - https://www.thetrainline.com/book/r...searchId=7012cba0-49cf-48f3-91ce-f7c57edd4519 - but whilst we have lots of passengers struggling with the "fun sized" diesel services between Manchester and Birmingham - on which few 'cheap' tickets exist - it seems ridiculous to waste so many resources on three competing London - Birmingham services. We've many spare EMUs capable of running on the fully electrified line between Manchester and Birmingham but we can't provide an eight coach EMU because we apparently need to run four coach DMUs for the minority of passengers traveling all the way to e.g. Bournemouth

4. That would then free up a lot of Voyagers to beef up the capacity on services between say York and Bristol/ Reading. Because that's what XC ought to be using diesel trains on for now

 

[Topological]

Could you build a reversing siding near Soho?

If so then the voyagers from Bristol/Bournemouth have somewhere to reverse without clogging the platforms. Because of the reversals at Birmingham they already cross the formation anyway

That leaves you with the Manchester 350s to turn around. Whilst I can see the sense in Northampton, I would see if Rugby could work. It looks like Platforms 1 and 2 can be used, with 1 being the best. There is also platform 6. Coventry could also make sense.

Also looking at a standard hour arrivals:

xx:18 from Reading
xx:24 from Bristol*
xx:27 from Leeds
xx:51 from Bournemouth*

Departures

xx: 03 to Bournemouth*
xx: 28 to Leeds
xx: 33 to Reading
xx: 42 to Bristol Temple Meads*

* denotes a Manchester train.

So match as follows

xx:18 forms xx:33 (15 minutes reversal)
xx:24 form xx:28 to Leeds
xx:27 from Leeds now goes as xx:42 to Bristol
xx:51 from Bournemouth forms xx:03 to Bournemouth (12 minutes reversal)

Or:

xx:18 from Reading forms the xx:28 to Leeds (As now)
xx:24 from Bristol forms xx:42 to Bristol (18 minutes reversal)
xx:27 from Leeds for xx:33 to Reading (As now)
xx:51 from Bournemouth forms xx:03 to Bournemouth (12 minutes reversal)

It reall is just that Bournemouth pair that cause the issues.

Manchester's are:

33 and 56 arrivals
01 and 30 departures

So to run a 350-based Manchester service needs a dedicated platform at New Street, or requires the trains to go further East.

This same issue is appearing in multiple threads, so here is what I posted earlier in the 350/2 thread. That is the challenge with letting EMUs run the Manchester.

I absolutely believe an 8-car EMU on Manchester would be much more use, but you have to find a way to deal with Birmingham.

 

[Bletchleyite]

3. Yes, that probably means an end to the many £9/11/12 tickets for London - Birmingham (based on fares for Wednesday morning - https://www.thetrainline.com/book/results?origin=urn:trainline:generic:loc:182gb&destination=urn:trainline:generic:loc:13gb&outwardDate=2026-01-07T00:00:00&outwardDateType=departAfter&journeySearchType=single&passengers[]=1991-01-05&directSearch=false&splitSave=true&transportModes[]=mixed&temporalDirection=next&transitDefinitionDirection=outward&paginationPriceDisplayed=false&searchId=7012cba0-49cf-48f3-91ce-f7c57edd4519 - but whilst we have lots of passengers struggling with the "fun sized" diesel services between Manchester and Birmingham - on which few 'cheap' tickets exist - it seems ridiculous to waste so many resources on three competing London - Birmingham services.

If you're going to bin one of the services marketed at through passengers, concentrating Chiltern on local passengers by adding more stops and removing its discount fares is probably the way to go, given that that's a diesel railway with limited capacity and adding capacity being expensive. The WCML local EMU services are a valuable high capacity (up to 240m twice an hour, which is slightly more than twice Chiltern's potential capacity) market-broadening exercise and really must be retained in their present form, even if fares change to being Advances at low prices up to the time of travel rather than TOC routed walk up fares. They do a lot to keep people out of old, polluting cars, far more than Avanti which is much more likely to be chosen by someone driving a modern ULEZ compliant ICE car or an EV.

Manchester-Northampton is just a pointless idea. It's not a pair of places that have high demand to be connected together with direct services. I suspect you'd have fewer people using that as a through service than you would have Long Buckby-Euston passengers, who would also lose their direct service completely.

Away from that, here's another suggestion that doesn't involve knackering existing, well used services - add an additional terminating platform at Birmingham International and terminate your Manchester EMU service there? There's easily room there for one. In fact there's room for a whole extra island with two tracks between the station and the road on the NEC side, but doing it on the cheap you could even just add a reversing siding without a platform. Or extend the TfW to Cov, as has been proposed before to get that out of the way, and terminate it in the existing platform at Intl, which is what happened with some of the Manchester service in pre-Princess days.

As a further alternative, have the Manchester EMU service take over the Wolves-Walsall via New St local service, giving you your half hourly path through New St without breaking anything.

Or just keep it simple and use existing units and paths by swapping the Reading XC with Liverpool for one of its EMU services per hour, and run that at 240m. With most XC Bristols now double units from Manchester (all of them could be if we give XC the remaining Voyagers), do we really need more capacity than 9.221 and 12.350 in each hour? I think you would struggle to fill that for most of the day even if you price dumped, and it's a solution that doesn't require disrupting anything else and would just require a few of the 350/2s to go to WMT to have enough units to do it. While Liverpool-Birmingham would be perfectly adequate with a 5-car XC (avoiding the Reading reversal issue) and an 8-car WMT each hour as demand is much lower than Manchester because it's a smaller city with a tiny connectional hinterland in comparison.

 

[sad1e]

Top and tail class 99s with 'dumb' trailers would be good with a good fit out.

Even just Top and Tail 67's or 68's would be good. There are a considerable amount of 67s in storage which I presume could be easily reactivated , and as they're built for 125 MPH passenger work minimal or no modification to them should be required.

All that's needed is somebody to come along and build a new lot of modern coaches.

 

[HSTEd]

Even just Top and Tail 67's or 68's would be good. There are a considerable amount of 67s in storage which I presume could be easily reactivated , and as they're built for 125 MPH passenger work minimal or no modification to them should be required.

All that's needed is somebody to come along and build a new lot of modern coaches.

The Class 67 was not particularly successful, which is why they are a lot of them stored.

Employment of those locomotives in the past has led to "negative differentials", where Class 67 are held to lower than the usual linespeed, due to the rather large axle load of such heavy locomotives.

The cost of a small run of coaches is likely to be greater than simply marginally increasing the size of a new modern multiple unit order.

 

[Topological]

67s is probably the most hilarious suggestion I have seen.

TfW have 7 sets and cannot resource 5 weekday diagrams. That is despite having spare locos as well.

TfW also had to shorten their diagrams to make sure there was enough fuel, resulting in Swansea to Manchester dropping from hourly to 2-hourly (the other hour being just Cardiff to Manchester with the 67).

The answer to Cross Country does not involve 67s.

 

[yorksrob]

I don't begrudge anybody preferring the faster service - I'd always catch it myself if it was available and the same price. The problem is that 50 miles is still a pretty short low-value journey when it's taking seats away from passengers who are going 400 miles or more. You do need to improve the GWR service, if nothing else because I'm not sure all the Taunton passengers would fit on it.

I'd be wary of making walk on fares more expensive as a fix. When I was last waiting at Taunton, I was due to catch an XC to Bristol. It was four carriages and rammed. Luckily I had an open ticket, so I was able to hop on the GWR about fifteen minutes later.

A better idea would be to remove any Bristol - Taunton advanced purchase from the XC services and put them on the GW's instead.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jan 2026 ==

This is simply untrue. In Germany, a Takt country, it's provided by way of regional services being very cheap, particularly with the Deutschlandticket but even before that with stuff like the Schoenes-Wochenende-Ticket. For years it's been common for less well-off people to make long journeys on regional services because it's cheap, while the ICE is excellent but pricey. It is directly analogous to Avanti vs. WMT on the WCML - the situation with the "cheap and fast vs. expensive and slow" thing is a near textbook copy. Plus Germany has Flixtrain, which is a low frequency budget Open Access operator sort of analogous to Lumo.

Yes, this is quite a good approach. The fact that we manage it on the WCML suggests that it should be perfectly possible - particularly as advanced purchase often isn't the great bargain that it used to be in days gone by.

 

[Bayum]

Reform the 222s in to 7 car trains and use them when they come off lease…

 

[JonathanH]

They do a lot to keep people out of old, polluting cars, far more than Avanti which is much more likely to be chosen by someone driving a modern ULEZ compliant ICE car or an EV.

What is your evidence for this? It is a repeated assertion with no grounding, and, even if it is true, applies elsewhere too.

 

[Harpo]

Trying to remove passengers making shorter journeys is riddled with traps, especially-
- Reduction of (available) service frequency,
- Loss of fastest journeys for many journeys
- Fares increases

Perhaps GBR’s best option might be to almost restore Cross-Country mark 1 (fewer true long distance services) as a new premium product with its own pricing, while converting XC mk2 (post-Princess) to low cost regional/suburban operations. And do it before open access operators force their hand.