455 miles and 22 stations will be connected thanks to a new service from CrossCountry.
The service, described by CrossCountry as the first of its kind, will roll out as part of the timetable change on the 15th of December.
The service will see a Voyager train from Cardiff and Penzance join together at Birmingham New Street before proceeding onto Edinburgh.
On the southbound journey, the train will split at Gloucester before proceeding to Cardiff and Plymouth.
The train will head from Birmingham via Burton-on-Trent to Leeds and then York, before joining the East Coast Mainline to Newcastle and Edinburgh.
“We’re delighted to introduce this new service joining Cardiff and Edinburgh directly by rail for the very first time – meaning even more connections for customers across the length and breadth of the country.
“Thanks to colleagues across CrossCountry and the wider rail industry for their support in delivering these new services linking two of Great Britain’s capital cities, as well as many other key towns and cities in between.”
Scott Maynard, CrossCountry’s Interim Managing Director
Responses
Maybe it is now time for the Cross-Country franchise to be terminated. I travel extensively by Rail, and undoubtedly the worst operator of all is Cross-Country! Constant over-crowding, constant cancellations, constant late running… it just goes on and on! The 30 year old Voyagers are well due for retirement. One suspects that Cross-Country’s American owners have no idea how bad the services really are!!
Perhaps instead of introducing a service that is no faster than those already available with a change – and much more expensive to boot – they should instead throw carriages at their existing services to relieve the chronic overcrowding on the services they already run.
Mr Holden, this news item has attracted a great deal of comments. Perhaps you could pass them on to the Cross Country MD and press him for a response. We shouldn’t allow him to get away with his nonsense.
This makes it sound as if Cross Country are making history with this new service.
When things rolled pretty smoothly in the mid 80s we had a decent Swansea – Cardiff Glasgow service then, privatisation then came along, and look at the delays and cancellations today, FARCE.
So the answer is to go back to GBR Rail…AKA British Rail? Absence really does make the heart fonder
Crosscountry’s interim MD needs to check his facts. It might be the first service of its kind for 30 years, but it certainly isn’t the first ever! But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
If the Managing Director of Cross Country takes the opportunity to read the comments here, he will perhaps judge what a dire service his company offers. Uncomfortable seats (although slightly better than than those on Hitachi trains!). Go instead in reasonable comfort to Scotland, by going by GWR to London, and then onwards by Avanti! And it works out much cheaper!!
I’m a little surprised at the Scottish destiation being Edinburgh; Glasgow has a much larger population
Hardly “new’ and absolutely nothing particularly good about it.
Only half a train will service Penzance and Cardiff and the northern leg will be overcrowded.
Its a cost cutting exercise.
How is it a cost cutting exercise? Are there seperate trains at the same frequency and larger capacity that go to the same places?
Let’s hope they have more than four carriages, are modern trains any don’t oversell. My last trip on cross country was abhorrent and yet it’s such a vital services between towns and cities across England.
So the usual wedged 4/5 car carts to BNS
they can’t run a half decent service now
TOCs like these make the old BR look world class!
Did ‘The Principality’ not do this decades ago? Perhaps it only ran to Glasgow.
The new timetable shows one direct train between Cardiff and Waverley each way per weekday, costing more than twice as much as journeys with one change, and not any quicker. Hardly an attractive proposition.
Cross-country are cancelling trains on other routes everyday, so I don’t hold out much hope for this service.
Is it too much to hope that Cross Country can cure the chronic overcrowding that now seems to be the norm on most of their services. 4/5 coach trains with very limited luggage space are hopeless. Crowding means that Refreshment Trolleys are usually stuck at one end of then train, with passengers simply not being able to access them!
Maybe call new service the Welsh RareBrit
Err, there previously used to be a direct service from Cardiff – Edinburgh Waverley/Glasgow Central, via Preston, in British Rail days. The Inter-City service split and joined at Carstairs, with separate portions of the train serving Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley.
This sounds much better than the suggested route, plus better trains are required, the smell from the cross country voyagers toilets fill the whole train, its vile.
Would be nice if CrossCountry would run some services from East Anglia apart from Stansted Airport. Maybe CrossCountry could run new services from Norwich to Cardiff Central, Birmingham New Street, Sheffield, Leeds. And East Midlands Railway to continue with operating from Norwich to Nottingham, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street or to be transferred to CrossCountry to run those services.
My other suggestion is that CrossCountry to inherit the Class 221 that Avanti West Coast aren’t going to use them anymore since the Class 805 replaced them and are now in service. And to completely refurbish them and to start using them.
And to work alongside with the other Class 221s that have already been refurbished. And maybe inherit some of the Class 222 Meridians from EMR. Or maybe the Class 222 could be cascaded to ScotRail to replace the Class 43 Inte7City HSTs.
Which could also mean that CrossCountry could inherit the Class 222 Meridian from East Midlands Railway and to use them on Cardiff Central-Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Central, Carlisle, Newcastle, Sunderland, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. What about CrossCountry to operate from Stansted Airport to Cardiff Central, Wrexham and Holyhead using Class 170 Turbostar.
I forgot to mention that there used to be summer Saturday services from the north of England to Tenby until were discontinued by cross country.
As they have documented all of their summer Saturday services from the north of England to Devon, Cornwall, Dorset etc.
Far fewer direct travel opportunities now exist than before for travelling cross country
There used to be services from the north of England to south Wales. They were discontinued after the franchise system came in. As were many other cross country services.
Consequently far few locations are now served by services that operated cross country.
There have been services from south Wales before via the West Coast.
What is needed for Wales is that south Wales to be reconnected with Northern Wales without going the long way via England. There needs to be a link from Aberystwyth going south to Cardiff again
Yes, that would be restoring the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen railway which was closed by the govt in response to Beechin’s recommendations back in the 1960s. This route was featured on a recent “Abandoned Railways from the Air” TV programme which showed a lot of the old route has been sold off or built over, so restoring it would be a major task.
When British Rail closed routes in the 1960s and 1970s they almost immediately ripped up all the tracks and sold off bits of the trackbed to local buyers – clearly determined to prevent any future re-opening.
They should have been directed by the Govt to maintain the trackbed intact to facilitate possible re-opening in the future, but that seemed to be be very far from the minds of politicians in those days.
Probably paid by the roads lobby and big oil.
Well, the Transport Minister at the time, who consented to rail closures, and commissioned the Beeching report, was Ernest Marples, who also owned a roads construction company – Marples-Ridgeway. Funny that!
Nit-picking pedant that I am, I have to point out that the Aberystwyth-Carmarthen route was closed ‘temporarily’ by a landslide in 1964, not by Beeching. In the immediate post-Beeching climate, of course, it was never intended to be re-opened. The other north-south route within Wales, Moat Lane-Newport change at Brecon, closed pre-Beeching in 1962.
Cannot think of a worse train than a voyager to undertake such a long distance journey! They really are the lowest of the low.
That looks good for internal transport
There used to be a Scotland to Cardiff service in Inter City days called ‘the Principality’. It ran via the WCML in the 1980s
Be fair to Cross Country. They need to be delighted about something for once, even though their Voyagers are the worst trains for long distance travel.