Cross Country services
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Cross Country services on the British rail network carry passengers on routes generally avoiding the London termini, instead travelling between other large centres of population.
History
Such routes have always been necessary, particularly since many of the main lines have started or finished in London, and transfers between termini there have always meant delays in a journey. Both before the 1923 Grouping and in today's fractured rail system this has meant cooperation between the operating companies when the services cross from one company's operating area to another.
An early example of this was the Aberdeen to Penzance Through Service [a distance of 785 miles (1256 km)], which was inaugurated on 3 October 1921, and ran on the track of seven different railway companies. The service was maintained by adding or removing the through coaches from trains already running on the routes: one coach of North British Railway stock, was added to an Aberdeen-London express, and was detached from it at York, where the train was made up with the addition of more coaches and sleeping cars to complete the journey.
During the 1930s, when competition from the roads became fierce and when many more people were travelling to coastal resorts, trains were being operated from the North of England to the South Coast, and from and through the Midlands to other resorts on the east and west coasts. Trains usually consisted of rakes of coaches from one of the "Big Four," and were hauled by locomotives that were sometimes changed when crossing from one company to another.
Today's services
In today's franchised railway, services are usually operated end-to-end by a single company, such that a journey covering the trains of two companies will necessarily involve a change of train. Examples of the cross-country services operating currently include:
- South West - Birmingham - the North East and Scotland (CrossCountry): The original Cross Country Route, Penzance — Birmingham — Sheffield — Leeds — Newcastle upon Tyne — Edinburgh — Aberdeen.
- South West - Birmingham - the North West (CrossCountry): Penzance — Birmingham — Glasgow, via the West Coast Main Line
- South Coast - Birmingham - Northern England and Scotland (CrossCountry): Bournemouth — Reading — Birmingham — Manchester — Newcastle — Edinburgh
- TransPennine Express routes: Liverpool — Manchester — Newcastle, Manchester — Sheffield — Hull, and Manchester — Edinburgh and Glasgow via the Lake District.
- West Wales - Manchester (Arriva Trains Wales): Carmarthen — Cardiff — Hereford — Shrewsbury — Crewe — Manchester
- East - West (East Midlands Trains): Liverpool — Manchester — Nottingham — Peterborough — Norwich