But there is! Here in the Thames Valley, I can get through trains from Reading to Gatwick airport, or from either Reading or Oxford to Southampton, Bournemouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, York and Newcastle. And some of these trains are very well patronised too - as a former North Downs commuter, I can attest to how popular the Gatwick trains are for holidaymakers from beyond Reading notwithstanding the poor rolling stock (Turbos) and lack of publicity for the service. I used Cross-Country reasonably regularly for business travel to Birmingham and less frequently to Manchester, and introduced the service to colleagues in Guildford who used it and found it equally useful.

These services are used less frequently than they should be for a number of reasons.

1 - They are almost invisible to the general travelling public. If you book to travel (for example) from Guildford to Manchester , or from Bristol or Banbury to Gatwick, I bet you'll only be offered a journey via London. There's no visible national advertising of the services - I see TV advertising for LNER (weird red-headed dolls dancing upside-down on carriage ceilings), SWR (cartoon seagulls and pigeons) and even GWR (the dreaded Famous Five), but nothing for Cross-Country, or from National Rail telling people - do you know you can get to the South Coast, South West or the London airports from most of England without having to travel across London using the tube? I think most casual rail passengers assume that if they want to travel to these destinations from the Midlands and the North they must go via London.

2 - We are slipping back to the position on XC that we were in just before the Voyagers were introduced, when services were run using tired old Mk2 stock, with worn seats and often announcements apologising for lavatories being out of action. A Preston-Portsmouth service than called at Reading at about 8am used a two-car class 158 train in Regional Railways livery, mannde by staff in new red Virgin uniforms. I recall that in the first year after Voyagers were introduced by Virgin, reading that the Reading-Birmingham route experienced the largest increase in passenger volume of any route in the UK. The Voyagers do now need a refresh (which I understand they are due to get).

Yes - XC often take longer than via London, and it's a shame if there are no deals currently equivalent to those offered by the London bound/originating services, but I was able to work on them (and others also seemed to have no problems), and I am not over 6ft tall so could fit in the seats comfortably, so as far as I was concerned it was a no-brainer. My concern is that XC/Reading Gatwick/Portsmouth-Cardiff services and the like will become even more "Cinderella" under GBR, as they do not have (forgive the expression) the "shroud-waiving" cachet of "Northern Powerhouse".


There's no reason that they should not be used for any journey of less than 30 minutes, the crucial decision someone has to make is balancing the time taken against the volume of passenger traffic generated. I think it's about right on the "eastern arm" services from the South Coast via Reading and Oxford to Manchester or from Reading to Newcastle. Yes, this means it's a semi-fast by overall standards, but it's still (for example) the quickest journey from Reading to Basingstoke - and long may it be so.

There's also nothing wrong with having services that hardly anyone uses from end to end, but which provide a series of overlapping useful middle- and long-distance links along its route. It's actually one of the good points about longer-distance cross country routes - kills the proverbial two birds with one stone! And for most of us, I'd guess we don't mostly travel on services between their ultimate origins and destinations, whether one of those is London or not.

Turning to Grahame's query of the factors-


Speed - inevitably, threading across the grain of mainline services there will be some compromises, but at least you avoid the unpleasantness of the tube, and for some London terminals, a not particularly convenient route between them. Do also bear in mind that a large proportion of travellers do not live on the platforms of London terminals or the major city-centre stations. I think I have posted before about a former work colleague from what was then the Manchester office of the firm I worked at, who had a meeting in Reading that I was also attending, who assumed he'd have to get to Manchester airport, fly to Heathrow, then get a taxi to Reading. He did not realise that there was an hourly service from his home station (Macclesfield) to Reading. Even at XC speed it was quicker!

Comfort is subjective, but be careful what you wish for - some of these routes might be seen as ideal for cascading 5-car IETS with ironing-board seats!

Luggage space - from my leisure use experience, Voyagers are no worse than most inter-city stock, and XC staff generally helpful but 165 Turbos on Reading-Gatwick, a service that does have a high end-to-end patronage in peak holiday periods with luggage is simply woeful. I expect this would be true on other services using DMUs on longer distance services to airports and resorts.

Costs - more special offers please, XC /GBR.

Facilities - for XC, it was a shame that Arriva took out Virgin's catering when they took over, but with the mixed pattern of distance of journeys, I doubt anything beyond restoring a Virgin-style hot snack service would pay.

Marketing - see above!

Does anyone use them? See above - YES! we/the relevant TOCs/GBR should be encouraging more to do so.

 

I do Bristol to Sheffield reasonably often and yes, it could definitely be faster but at 2h40ish it's much better than driving and can be reasonably priced if you pick trains carefully and use SplitSave. I'm really not bothered about catering, but the fact that the WiFi is invariably crap and they are built as Faraday cages so have minimal mobile signal is very annoying, not to mention that Sundays quite often have an extra hour added to allow for engineering.

I'd wager that electrification and replacement with 80x stock could make a significant impact on those times in the core, if only by permitting faster acceleration and braking. Presumably when HS2 starts there will also be an opportunity to recast the timetables into New Street in favour of Cross Country. 

 
Like so many things in life, you’re more likely to hear about the one time something goes wrong than the many times something goes right.

 
More expensive, less comfortable than the alternatives. In the 90s there was a premium for going via London; CrossCountry was the cheap option. These days it seems to be the other way round. Given that a Voyager airline seat doesn't offer enough space to open a laptop fully, there no longer seems to be any advantage in travelling via CrossCountry.

Unless CrossCountry is gifted with a massive new train order (and the drivers/guards to staff them) I think, sadly, there's a strong argument for them concentrating on the core network and trimming a few of the extremities. A joined-up GBR could also look at local operators relieving pressure on some of the XC pinch-points - for example, a few more GWR Oxford–Banbury services would address the rush-hour crush on the Voyagers right now.

 
Mostly the latter I think.  Very noticeable how it’s increased a lot over the last few years.

It is, on the whole, an excellent and reliable service.  Naturally we get to hear about it on the odd occasion it goes wrong.

 
I think main reason is (excessive) time, cross country effectively operate semi-fast services, nothing express.  

Many London services will have sections that are 50-100 miles between stations, and the trains use electric power to quickly accelerate to high speed.

Cross country uses (aging) diesel trains, often with downrated motors or one engine isolated so they are a noisy, sluggish by comparison train.  You never get the feeling you are flying along making good progress with cross country. 

Then there are other problems, cramped seats, lack of view with some seats looking at pillars, and tickets that are expensive (if you are not aware of spilt ticket sites), and even if you use split ticketing they seem to deliberately change your seat every split, sometimes change from front to back unit mid journey too.

My last cross country journey, trolley was static on way out, so no food unless wanted to fight way along aisle crowded with standees, on way back was double unit, but our seats were in unit without trolley.  So no refreshments available.  If I could get equivalent of a good pub lunch on a 3+ hour journey I would spend the money, but I can't so if I have a choice I avoid XC

 

Has that first statement been confirmed as correct by an analysis of the relevant ticket data? Either way for our fairly frequent trips to visit family in Yorkshire - does that qualify as really long distance? -  the obvious rail solution would be the direct XC services between Exeter and Wakefield/Leeds but we always travel via London because:
the c.25 year old Voyagers are awful
tickets via London can usually be cheaper than XC's offering (DIG>WKF Railcard Standard Class 2 weeks in advance XC Direct £88.80, GWR/LNER £72.75 using the National Rail planner)
LNER offer a very nice London><Yorkshire First Class trip at a reasonable price (don't mention GWR!)
the travel time via London is not that much more than the direct XC route but it provides a significantly more comfortable journey
XC service punctuality & reliability is seemingly not that great

 


Maybe they felt a little p-peckish?

https://youtu.be/fI0Fa66h6Qo?si=21zaWcbZuyvZj0FJ

 
Speed of journey.

There is/was a keenness to get the services stopping 'on my patch' in order to increase journey opps.

XC has really suffered - they shouldn't be being used for 'local' journeys of less than 30mins frankly, and connection hubs used (they did try these outside the BHM central hub a few years ago, but customers wanted the BHM facilities), so gave up again.

It could work, but the longer the journey, the faster end-to-end you need to make them work.

 
Very effective photos and the local talent clearly see the underpass needed murals and also plumped for very sombre blue lias faux masonry. (The real thing would have needed to be fetched some distance...)

Next, guerilla gardening on the spiral ramp thing would be positive.

Mark

 
My thoughts ... cross country services (lower case - description not company) have become (and intentionally) more of a regional service that crosses over the spoked of main lines from London. The various services arjoined up on these crossservices because there's no single station on most of the routes where evenyone gets off and on. There have been very few  passengers travelling from Penzance to Aberdeen on the one train, and there are very few from Cardiff to Portsmouth Harbour. I suspect that very few people got onto the train at Crewe headed for Skegness when that was a through train. And does anyone catch the through train that runs from Bristol Temple Meads to Stanstead Airport (1L98 at 06:25, due in 11:41)

Why is there no really long distance travel avoiding London? Is there a market for it?  How can it best be served?  Why is it nor served / used at present?

Speed?
Comfort?
Lack of luggage space and assistance?
Fares?
Facilities on the train (e.g. meals at seat)?
Marketing?
Simply no-one would use it?

 
Latest ORR figures put GWR as second (after Network Rail main stations) as operator with most passenger assists

36,499 for period 8-10 (13 Oct - 4 Jan)
increase of 25% on previous year,
and averaging just over 3000 per week

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/vdjdaxz1/assists-factsheet-2024-25-rail-periods-8-10.pdf

Not sure if that means more people are finding trains harder to use so booking more assists, or if GWR usage has gone up 25%, or if more are aware it exists so choosing to use it.

 
Friday April 11

At 04:30, JourneyCheck had 148 'Train Formation Updates', including this pair:

 
To summarise:

1P11 05:16 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington (07:24) : departed +17, arrived +15.
1P02 05:23 Hereford to Paddington : 5 cars, diverted from Worcester Shrub Hill via Stroud, arrived +25.
1P16 06:43 Worcester Shrub Hill to London Paddington (08:44) : departed +42, held Charlbury (+59), arrived +58.
2E80 07:00 Worcester Shrub Hill to Didcot Parkway (08:46) : departed +9, arrived +9.
1P18 07:13 Great Malvern to London Paddington (09:42) : held Shrub Hill (+18), Norton (+26) and Charlbury (+34), arrived +24.
1P20 08:15 Worcester Shrub Hill to Paddington (10:23) : departed +35, held Norton (+43) and Charlbury (+55), arrived Reading +51 and cancelled thereafter.
1P22 08:56 Great Malvern to London Paddington (11:24) : started from Worcester Foregate Street.

1W11 05:53 London Paddington to Great Malvern (08:38) : held Evesham (+21) and Parkway (+32), arrived Worcester Foregate Street +38 and cancelled thereafter.
1W21 10:53 Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill (13:01) : started from Reading.
1W33 16:58 Paddington to Great Malvern (19:25) : started from Reading (+15), arrived +13.

 

Sorry, I should have been clearer that there were trains running off route. RTT never shows off-route trains, since it can only show reports against a timetable. Even LiveRail, which can show some off-route trains, does not list them under off-route stations. It can only show the diversion in place of the originally intended route.

So RTT continues to show an off-route train progressing along its timetabled route, with no report for the bit it has diverted round. If you look a station (or timing point) on the section that was diverted round, this train still appears listed but will show no report. Of course a "no report" is not evidence of anything, since reports go missing for all sorts of reasons.

 
So that's why Trump wanted to hit an island full of penguins with high tariffs - or had he seen too many Wallace & Gromit films?

 
From this evening - a welcome to Melksham and some local characters to greet you

 
Not helpful for this case now but even if a train isn’t shown on RTT they usually do appear on signalling maps like Open Time Trains.  You can often then work out what it is from the headcode.

 
Thanks, Clan Line.

 
Could have been these - both left SWI around the and would have run non-stop on diversion through Chippenham:

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y21977/2025-04-10/detailed#allox_id=0 - left SWI 1729

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y21978/2025-04-10/detailed#allox_id=0 - shows 'pass' SWI 1723 but actually must have stopped as it was there a while when I was keeping an eye on it and ended up behind the above one

 

 
I can't believe I'm even posting this here, as it's so ... wow! 

From the BBC:


 

 
Back in place !!  (Today's Telegraph)

 
Not definitely - didn't spot any occupants as they passed through, but even the slower trains were moving reasonably quickly so I can't say for sure.

 
I've just been caught up in the knock-on delays. Were they definitely empty or just lightly loaded? Paddington-Swansea trains were diverted through Chippenham. It looks like some were held for some time at Swindon - perhaps awaiting crew, or maybe awaiting decision on whether or not the main line would reopen, or even awaiting slots between other trains. As a result of these waits at Swindon several ended up running through in close succession, so perhaps the first one had mopped up passengers and those behind were fairly empty.

Perhaps some had terminated at SWI for the same reason, and were running ECS to move out of the way. I note that a number of the Wales axis trains had started short at Reading; I suppose it's possible that one of the the 'second in the hour' Cardiff trains was part-cancelled and moving out of the way as well.

RTT won't have shown these if looking at Chippenham, as they were off their timetabled route. A search for those passing Wootton Bassett might offer more clues, as for a while the majority of trains running west would have ended up going through Chippenham.

 
A small colony of those at our local Backwell Lake would be absolutely brilliant! 

 

but presumably they would have stopped if they had been 'normal' services? They all should stop AFAIK, unless the decision was taken to skip some stops to make up time - hopefully the passengers were suitably warned if that was the case

 
You'd do better to look at JourneyCheck:

Or in RTT at Bristol Parkway there's a mass of red "cancel" and delay, while at Reading several trains can be found that show "no report" from BPW to Wootton Bassett Junction. So the trains through CPM may have been ECS, or just virtually empty because so few passengers managed to make use of them.

 
I suspect after a number of signalling issues and a fatality at Stapleton Road today there were some positioning moves to get sets back into the right place.   These last minute moves do occasionally appear on RTT after the event but not always.

 
You don't have to go to Cornwall to see those - we've got them in the park in Warminster !