I understand that was the intended timetable. Some were odd as you take Cardiff - Birmingham it went via Bristol. (Did it reverse at Temple Meads?)
Yeah, it was (going to be?) bi-hourly from the Midlands to Cardiff as an extension of some Midlands - Bristol services - plus one Swansea service a day (which seems to be forgotten about)
The pattern that eventually got established (once the extremities were chopped) off was very effective. They just stretched too far, too soon in one leap in September 2002.
^^ this ^^
If they'd kept the basic network the same and introduced the new trains (with only a token service to Aberdeen/ Brighton/ Penzance etc) ... then introduced the half hourly sections in the "core" (e.g. Newcastle to Bristol)... then introduced a few extensions (e.g. hourly Edinburgh to Newcastle, rather than just the three trains a day that BR ran)... and only later embarked on the regular extensions to Dundee/ Cardiff etc ... that'd have worked significantly better - plus the proof of the improved passenger numbers would have allowed Virgin to go to the Government and ask for the money to order more/longer trains
Instead, they went for a "big bang" with very little margin for error, so things had very little resilience
Liverpool now gets an arguably better evenly space 2tph Birmingham service.
(Not wanting to start another "Isn't Liverpool hard done by?" debate)
PLEASE no more "Liverpool is hard done by" threads!
You fling mud at the wall, sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn't.
Agreed
Enthusiasts are negative about pretty much anything "new" (and then nostalgic about it once it is no longer) - everything timetable recast is filled with doom-laden prophecies, or obsessive focus on very minor pairs of stations whilst missing the bigger picture - e.g. the Eureka timetable on the ECML was slated, but now that the
It was obvious to me from the start that parts of Operation Princess were going to be a potential disaster. They were increasing frequencies, but reducing the number of seats per hour. Two 4 coach Voyagers have a lot fewer standard class seats than a 2+7 HST, and they even had fewer seats than a typical XC Loco + 7 formation
How many of the loco hauled services had seven coaches of seats though?
I remember a number of services being shorter than seven coaches, and it was common to have a half coach worth of "brake" (i.e. no passenger seats)
But every year that passes, the longer the trains are remembered to be