CrossCountry through services

I fear Jim Steer has not studied the May National Rail Timetable, when he says that “it reveals a CrossCountry (XC) service partway back to pre-COVID levels” (RAIL 965).

He says there is an hourly BournemouthManchester service, albeit that “not all trains manage the full distance” - a truly ironic statement!

Pre-COVID, XC ran an hourly Bournemouth-Manchester plus an hourly Reading-Newcastle service, the latter starting back every second hour from Southampton Central.

The Newcastle service has not re-appeared in any form, but there is an hourly ReadingManchester service which starts back from Bournemouth every second hour.

So, Bournemouth to Birmingham and Reading to Birmingham have had a 50% cut and Southampton to Birmingham a 67% cut in frequency. It’s very different from Jim Steer ’s description.

He does, however, make some valid comments about through services. In 2002, Virgin CrossCountry introduced ‘Operation Princess’, whereby short trains ran more frequently than those they replaced.

What I didn’t like was that Bournemouth, for example, had daily through trains to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool, whereas now it would be Manchester only all day.

My argument was that CrossCountry wasn’t primarily for business users, but there to provide an opportunity for those who didn’t want to change trains (the elderly, in particular), to have at least one through train a day to a destination of their choice.

The result of the change is what we see today - a declining service.