UK Cross Country Change

[Bullhead]

I see that one of the new franchise's commitments is to introduce a direct 2-hourly King's Cross to Lincoln service.

[CVR1865]

They have also promised faster journey times. So perhaps this will mean a quickening of the Flying Scotsman. Races to the north again?

[karlrestall]

Shame First didn't get it; one wonders if they had won the franchise, would we have seen a return of the sleeper services back on the ECML? Races to the North, what goes around comes around, quite how they are going to speed services up is a bit of a mystery. To speed services up you need decent track and infrastucture which is in the hands of notwork rail. Once the track is up to a good enough standard you then need trains capable of running at high enough speeds to take advantage of the track which could mean new rolling stock for the ECML. They also don't say how much they are aiming to shave off the journey time; minutes, hours? Who knows

Regards

Karl

[Bullhead]

Shame First didn't get it; would we have seen a return of the sleeper services back on the ECML?

I'd have thought that if it wasn't a franchise commitment First would like to ditch the sleepers, as I can't imagine that they're anything more than an excellent way of losing money.

[52A]

Or perhaps they are going to have some genuine express trains instead of the current procession of stopping trains.

Best of all we won't be having the bearded gobs***e telling us what a wonderful chap he is!

[CVR1865]

Hold on to your semaphores everyone. National Express now control all the franchises on the old LNER routes in England (i think) except obviously the fcc one but that goes to Brighton anyway. Is Gordy Brown up to something here?