Cross Country trains: Should I expect them to be full?

[igloo]

Hi folks,

I'm planning to take a trip from Oxford to Leicester shortly, and as I'll have luggage and be with a nervous post-pandemic traveller, I was trying to work out how full the trains are likely to be, and whether it might be worth shelling out for 1st class (or maybe even a taxi, looking at the first class prices even with 2together).

I had a search online, and while some train companies have pages giving predicted train loadings, Cross Country don't seem to be one of them. Also, searching these forums, I see a number of threads about Cross Country still running reduced timetables with short trains. But I think my travel times may be off-peak enough to be fine?

I'm thinking of something like
Fri 15th July: OXF 11:39 - 12:48 BHM 13:22 - 14:10 LEI
Mon 18th July: LEI 14:50 - 15:38 BHM 16:04 - 17:13 OXF
although I could shift an hour either way if it would make a significant difference.

Does anyone know how likely we are to find that standard class is packed, please?


Thanks
Ian

 

[gabrielhj07]

I imagine XC don’t publish predicted loadings as it would cause them some embarrassment! First class might be a good shout on the Oxford - Birmingham part of the trip, but on a 170 it’s really not that much different.

 

[Deafdoggie]

I would expect XC to be full. Maybe not crush loaded for the entire journey, but certainly full.
Do a pretend booking right up to seat selection and choose your seat, you'll then see what seats are available as a (very) rough guide to busyness.

 

[igloo]

Ah, I hadn't thought about doing 1st class for only one of the legs. That's a good idea, thanks!

As far as I can tell I can't choose a seat on crosscountrytrains.co.uk (which I assume is the site most likely to allow it). I can ask it to reserve me one, but it just picks one for me; I can't see how many are available.

 

[Watershed]

Ah, I hadn't thought about doing 1st class for only one of the legs. That's a good idea, thanks!

As far as I can tell I can't choose a seat on crosscountrytrains.co.uk (which I assume is the site most likely to allow it). I can ask it to reserve me one, but it just picks one for me; I can't see how many are available.

Unfortunately a recent "upgrade" to their website resulted in the seat selector functionality being lost!

TrainSplit will suggest the cheapest combination of tickets and has a seat selector, however it's difficult to get a proper picture of how busy the train is because of limitations with the seat reservation database (stemming from the "social distancing era").

If you have seat reservations I wouldn't be overly worried. There's certainly no need to upgrade to First, although it might make for a more comfortable journey.

 

[Wolfie]

As a general rule of thumb Cross Country trains are generally busy.