How long did the Gatwick Airport, Guildford, Cross Country services run. I use to board those from time to time but they always ran off peak. I use to wonder if they would have got more passengers if they ran during the peak.
Services like those were tied in to the location and availability of overnight stabling capacity. Because of the far flung nature of XC's network, at that time there were a number of overnight stabling points that are no longer used, such as Three Bridges. So the odd Brighton and Gatwick extensions early morning and late at night are running from or to a depot, and don't really affect the peak and inter peak standard pattern timetables much, where the trains would normally terminate and return north at Reading.
Nowadays, as the timetable runs down in the evening a significant number of units (eight I believe) end up at the end of the 'southeast' leg of the XC network, and run empty to their common stabling point at Eastleigh TRSMD. Some run empty back from Bournemouth or Southampton, others run empty down from Reading. Similar length ECS moves take place in the early morning as the timetable 'wakes up' - which is why the northbound Guildford service runs when it does, as it arrives via Havant empty from Eastleigh.
In broad terms, it is much easier to extend trains beyond the normal timetable very early and very late, because the units are either starting from a depot, or have no immediate return journey to make.
Another current example of an odd XC origin is the early train from Nottingham to Bournemouth, IIRC this originally started from Derby, having arrived from the main depot at Central Rivers. Re-routing it to run from Nottingham instead was a simple way of adding capacity from Nottingham to Birmingham - but south of Birmingham it is running in exactly the same timings as if it had come from Manchester Piccadilly as normal. Clearly to provide a Nottingham to Bournemouth service at any other time of day would prove nigh on impossible, because where would you get the unit from in the first place, without disrupting the clock face pattern?
Hope that makes sense.
). There's a fair bit of comment on the practicalities of the timings. It seems that in 2008, the 0545 Gatwick Airport - Birmingham New Street ran via Redhill & Guildford, which I'd probably class as a peak-hours train!
