Chorley Cake
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Apologies if done before. Blackburn ? Birkenhead ? Northampton ?
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Trivia - Largest towns served by just one TOC
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Swindon must be up there.
lxfe_mxtterz
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Poole (population 151k, according to Wikipedia) is only served by South Western Railway.
Cambus731
Established Member
Colchester must be up there as well. I first thought of Chelmsford or Maidstone, but Colchester is slighter larger.
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I remember when a lot of Cross Country trains terminated at Poole. Although I believe that was more to do with operational convenience. Do Cross Country no longer serve Poole at all now?
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Just realised I overlooked Ipswich which is larger than Colchester
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I remember when a lot of Cross Country trains terminated at Poole. Although I believe that was more to do with operational convenience. Do Cross Country no longer serve Poole at all now?
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Just realised I overlooked Ipswich which is larger than Colchester
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pitdiver
Established Member
Mansfield 106k EMR
lxfe_mxtterz
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Google suggests that they all terminate at Bournemouth now. I wasn't even aware they used to serve Poole.
Cambus731
Established Member
Maybe it was longer ago than I thought. Probably when it was Intercity Cross Country. I think they went to Poole as it was easier for the spoon to change ends there.Google suggests that they all terminate at Bournemouth now. I wasn't even aware they used to serve Poole.
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Just had a look on Wikipedia and it looks like Swindon and Northampton are about equal in size. Both about 220,000.
TBH I thought Northampton was about the same size as Chelmsford/Maidstone/Colchester, ie about 120,000, but it turns out to be much bigger than I thought.
Ipswich is smaller than I thought., but still bigger than Colchester.
Do no Avanti West Coast trains call at Northampton at all? I thought maybe about 2 a day did?
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Their route map says it's covered by trains from Shrewsbury or Birmingham New Street to Euston.
Cambus731
Established Member
So it looks like Swindon is the winner?
Is it only served by Great Western?
Is it only served by Great Western?
swt_passenger
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The last regular XC Poole service was about 2002/3, they hadn't really allowed any turn round time in the Princess timetable and it was so unreliable it was curtailed to Bournemouth.
faltskog36abba
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Rochdale but still a smaller population than Swindon.
supervalkoinen
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Birkenhead served by TfW.
Robertj21a
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Eastbourne?
SteelWeelApeal
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Woking?
Revilo
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XC don’t currently serve it (but hopefully will again), but Weston S M population only 71,000
Chorley Cake
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I wouldn’t class Bidston as Birkenhead to be honest although it probably is officially.
GLC
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East Kilbride is about 75k and is only served by Scotrail. Paisley is 77k and I can’t think of any TOCs other than Scotrail
221129
Established Member
Swindon is often served by XC on diversions if that counts?
jamesst
Established Member
Wonder if you could stretch it by saying the new tfw class 230s are being maintained at Birkenhead North depot?!
It was in the old county borough of Birkenhead, as was Upton.
Western Sunset
Established Member
During most of the lockdowns, Poole has only been served by an hourly Weymouth - Bournemouth shuttle. Not even any through trains to London.
Chelmsford's 111,000, a city and only served by GA.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
Belfast; depending on how you classify the Enterprise cross-border service?
Interesting one - certainly it has a large population (the borough is bigger than Swindon but the town is smaller). However, there's the slightly odd Scotrail/Northern service which runs from Dumfries in the morning peak and calls at Blaydon, MetroCentre, and Dunston - I think it's classed as Northern east of Carlisle but might be a little ambiguous. I know there used to be through trains from the MetroCentre to Glasgow via Kilmarnock which I believe were ScotRail throughout, but I think they went a couple of years back.
If you're going by local authority boundaries Wirral borough encompasses Birkenhead, Bidston and the majority of the Wirral peninsula (certainly most of the populated bit apart from Ellesmere Port and Neston.)
EnriqueEspaña
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I think the answer to the OPs question, as already stated, is likely to be Swindon. But another one high on that list will be High Wycombe. The most up to date figures I can find (as of 2019) put it at about 140,000 for the 'High Wycombe Urban Area'.
121,000 seems to be the Wikipedia figure Colchester, whereas Colchester Borough Council quote 194,000 https://www.colchester.gov.uk/info/cbc-article/?catid=colchester-statistics&id=KA-01631
It certainly was reported as the fastest growing town in England in recent years.
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