Trivia - major cities with two completely different lines connecting them

[dazzler]

Peterborough to Doncaster - either direct via the ECML, or via "the Joint Line" (Spalding, Sleaford and Lincoln.)

 

[MarlowDonkey]

Marylebone to Aylesbury via High Wycombe and via Amersham.

 

[thenorthern]

Not main lines but Manchester to Blackburn has two lines to choose from. So does Leeds and Bradford.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Birmingham to Wolverhampton with a train line and a tram line.

Cardiff seems to be an oddity. The commercial city centre has two routes that sensibly connect to the cathedral at Llandaff (between Llandaff and Danescourt stations on different lines but walkable from either).

 

[A S Leib]

Manchester to Rochdale, Altrincham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester Airport, Eccles and East Didsbury via train or tram.

 

[D6130]

Is that ECML vs WCML/HML/A2I (Aberdeen to Inverness)?

Reason I ask is because the scheduled trains (sleeper and Chieftain) both use the HML as far as Edinburgh and there aren't any trains scheduled from Aberdeen to London via Inverness (are there?)

Then they share Aberdeen to Dundee at least. Admittedly not the majority of the route, but still seventy plus miles.

Yes, ECML Vs WCML. Of course, prior to 1967 the two rival routes joined/divided at Kinnaber Junction, about 3:miles North of Montrose.

Chester to Liverpool, via Runcorn or Rock Ferry
London to Horsham, via Gatwick Airport or Dorking
London to Epsom, via Wimbledon or Sutton
Birmingham to Edinburgh, via Carlisle or Newcastle

Since when have Horsham and Epsom been considered as major cities?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Feb 2025 ==

Manchester to Rochdale, Altrincham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester Airport, Eccles and East Didsbury via train or tram.

Apart from Manchester, none of those places could be remotely described as major cities!

Marylebone to Aylesbury via High Wycombe and via Amersham.

Again, I would not describe Aylesbury as a major city!

 

[najaB]

Yes, ECML Vs WCML. Of course, prior to 1967 the two rival routes joined/divided at Kinnaber Junction, about 3:miles North of Montrose.

Then I'd say London to Dundee is a better shout than London to Aberdeen.

 

[D6130]

Then I'd say London to Dundee is a better shout than London to Aberdeen.

OK. I'll give you that!

 

[duffield]

Taking the question literally, "regular" doesn't have to mean "frequent", so Nottingham has two different routes to Peterborough, since apart from the "usual" route via Grantham there is a regular daily service of two trains per day via Loughborough and Melton Mowbray, and one train per day in the opposite direction.

Of course if the question was actually intended as "regular throughout the day or regular and frequent" rather than just "regular" then this does not qualify.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

London to Oxford.

 

[hermit]

London to Portsmouth has 3 regular routes - via Guildford, via Eastleigh and via Horsham. It used to have a 4th on Sundays, via Hove. Not to mention substantial diversions via Effingham Junction or Staines when there is engineering work on the main lines.

 

[D6130]

Bristol to Birmingham....

via Bromsgrove
via Worcester and Bromsgrove
via Worcester and Kidderminster

 

[RobertsN]

Southampton has 2 relatively direct routes to London:
* Via Basingstoke/Woking towards Waterloo
* Via Basingstoke/Reading towards Paddington

Other options are available (via Fareham) though not as direct

 

[Cambus731]

Probably not quite what the author of the thread had in mind, but Bury st Edmunds is linked to London by rail by with Ipswich or Cambridg.
similar situation exists with Burnley and Hebden Bridge in that there is very little in it whether one travels to London via Preston or via Leeds.

 

[liamf656]

Doncaster to Hull services can go either via Selby or Goole

 

[Isambard]

Thanks to the rivalry between the SER and LCDR, many places in Kent have a legacy of alternative routes to London.
Similarly, others in the south once served by any two of SER, LBSCR, LSWR and GWR.

 

[BeijingDave]

Manchester Victoria or Piccadilly to Salford Crescent

 

[mlambeuk]

Deleted

 

[D6130]

Manchester Victoria or Piccadilly to Salford Crescent

Like!

 

[Topological]

Manchester Victoria or Piccadilly to Salford Crescent

If we are being like that then:

London Bridge (City of Southwark) to Cannon Street (City of London) and London Blackfriars (City of London)

Also the Salford Crescent example can include trains that terminate at Manchester Oxford Road.

 

[Spartacus]

You can now add Manchester-York to that, with the Castleford route (York & North Midland) carrying passengers again.

There's 11 miles shared between York and Church Fenton though.

Could have Wakefield and Leeds or Wakefield and Doncaster though.

 

[BeijingDave]

If we are being like that then:

London Bridge (City of Southwark) to Cannon Street (City of London) and London Blackfriars (City of London)

Also the Salford Crescent example can include trains that terminate at Manchester Oxford Road.

Salford (a city, with a population of over a quarter of a million) is more valid than the many towns in this thread.

I was just following the thread title

 

[D6130]

Salford (a city, with a population of over a quarter of a million) is more valid than the many towns in this thread.

I was just following the thread title

Absolutely agree.....some of the posts on this thread are completely off-topic, but I'm too much of a softy to report them!

 

[Topological]

Salford (a city, with a population of over a quarter of a million) is more valid than the many towns in this thread.

I was just following the thread title

It was genius

Even ticked the box of "major" cities.

In fact it is Manchester that is the less valid of the two cities, only becoming a city in 1853 (hence the trivia that the Manchester to Liverpool line was not the first intercity route)

 

[plugwash]

Can anybody think of major cities that have two independent lines connecting them?

Edinburgh to London has direct trains via either the east and west coast as does Edinburgh to Birmingham.

Edinburgh to Manchester had direct trains via either the East or the West coast not so long ago, but the ones via the East coast have since been cut back.

Birmingham has direct trains to London via both the WCML and the Chiltern mainline.

Oxford has direct trains to London via both the Chiltern mainline and the WCMLGWML.

 

[Western Gaffer]

Then I'd say London to Dundee is a better shout than London to Aberdeen.

OK. I'll give you that!

Isn't it really London to Edinburgh anyway, or is there a WCML service to Aberdeen (or Dundee) that isn't via Edinburgh?

 

[thenorthern]

Technically as Stourbridge and Coseley are both in the Metropolitan borough of Dudley there is a direct service from Birmingham to Dudley but I don't think it really counts as Dudley.

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet but Manchester to Chester had two routes either the Mid-Cheshire line or the one via Warrington Bank Quay. Manchester to Preston either goes via Bolton or via Wigan.

 

[BeijingDave]

Technically as Stourbridge and Coseley are both in the Metropolitan borough of Dudley there is a direct service from Birmingham to Dudley but I don't think it really counts as Dudley.

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet but Manchester to Chester had two routes either the Mid-Cheshire line or the one via Warrington Bank Quay. Manchester to Preston either goes via Bolton or via Wigan.

I don't know if it's permissible. Probably not but still interesting:

The mid-Cheshire Chester to Manchester route is so slow, you are sometimes routed instead via Crewe (albeit with a change of trains) by the National Rail site, which makes three routes from Chester in practical terms.

 

[najaB]

Isn't it really London to Edinburgh anyway, or is there a WCML service to Aberdeen (or Dundee) that isn't via Edinburgh?

As a through service, no. But I thought the thread was about lines rather than services. There's an entirely logical route via both the ECML and WCML.

 

[DelW]

London to Portsmouth has 3 regular routes - via Guildford, via Eastleigh and via Horsham. It used to have a 4th on Sundays, via Hove. Not to mention substantial diversions via Effingham Junction or Staines when there is engineering work on the main lines.

A small number of peak Portsmouth Direct services run via Effingham in the normal timetable, either for route knowledge retention or to avoid congestion at Woking Junction (or both).

But they may fail the OP's second paragraph test, as they share the normal route between Guildford and Pompey.