Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi all
Quick question, when are xc planning to bring back pre-covid services? E.g. Bournemouth-Manchester Piccadilly half hourly and the occasional Bournemouth-Newcastle?

Who can possibly tell? When there's sufficient demand and enough staff? When we return to pre-Covid life - which may not be for several years, if then?

When Great British Railways has failed, and grahame & Mark A get put in charge of the more forward-thinking body created to replace it.

Bournemouth to Manchester was only hourly pre-COVID. It’s supposedly temporary that it’s 2 hourly.

You’ll be waiting a while for it to be half hourly…

Aren't they duplicates?    They carry lots of short distance traffic. What's wrong with asking through people to change at Basingstoke, Reading, Oxford, Banbury, Leamington Spa and Coventry?  Because Cross Country do not manage any stations, a reduction of their train services by (say) 50% results in a financial saving much closer to that 50% than it would for a TOC that also has the overhead of looking after stations.  And people would get a far lower price per hour spent travelling too because they would have a lot longer on the railway for just a little more in terms of pounds. To be 100% clear - this is not a serious proposal.

From a quick look at XC's website, it appears that the pattern is North East to South West (Newcastle, Scotland etc. to Bristol, Exeter and beyond) and North West - South East/South Central (Manchester to Reading, Southampton & Bournemouth) for the new timetable, so if you to get to the East Midlands, Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland without crossing London it is still a change of trains at Birmingham New Street.

Shame, but could be worse - fingers crossed for full restoration of services in due course

It *is* worse: there's no thought to Bristol to Manchester connections at Birmingham New Street... with a couple of the wait times, like Salisbury, being geological.

Mark

Southampton to Birmingham.   From a comment last week at a webinar concerning how much this service is decimated.

Monday to Friday trains, 2 years ago.   Only those marked "*" are running next week.

* 05:15
06:16
* 07:14
07:56
* 08:12
09:17
09:47
* 10:17
11:17
11:47
* 12:17
13:16
13:47
* 14:15
15:17
15:46
* 16:17
* 17:17
17:47
18:15
* 19:17
20:17