2020 Roundup: Intercity (Classic)
Customer relations in full effect.
Intercity is the primary passenger sector for longer distance travel; it covers most long distance "medium speed" operations (as opposed to "high speed" Pullman operations - which are a sub-sector of Intercity). Born in the 1950s and 1960s as a train service name, it was later adopted by British Rail as a brand for it's longer distance services along the then newly electrified West Coast Route. The brand, referring to the network of long distance services predominately between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow was a success, and as other routes were modernised (not always including electrification, but at the very least away from steam), they too became branded as "Intercity" (*1). The fast electric trains, often cruising at around 90mph (*2), provided British Rail with an enviable product; a futuristic and modern train to ride on, which was more cost efficient to operate and soundly beat out the increasing road competition. The 1980s saw the birth of "Intercity Pullman" (later abbreviated to just "Pullman", although still an Intercity operation), which introduced high speed operations from London to many northern English cities, with trains often speeding past at around 150mph. Thankfully, the continued investment in electrification continued (*3), with more and more routes converted, and allowing more and more of a "network effect" - where the return on investment for further projects becomes ever greater, as more of the initial route is electrified to start with, and major stations already wired up. Further works by civil engineers in straightening tracks to allow maximum speeds paid dividends with further improved speeds as slow speed limits were removed (*4).
The long distance Intercity network reached it's zenith in the early 1990s, before hitting a double problem. Government intervention, technical limits and internal reorganisations saw a loss of revenue growth. Rather than doing most things in house, Intercity now had to spend time and resources on contracting out many operations - seeing much of it's onboard food catering now bought in pre-made (*5), and operations like cleaning seeing contracted out in the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these returned to inhouse operations for reliability reasons later, but the reorganisation made Intercity stumble somewhat. The technical limits of the widespread 1.5kV DC electric power, with 100-110mph the most realistically achievable prohibited further time savings (*6). Although the technology was old, it was widespread and to be fair had been simple to deploy and simple to harness - not just for traction but for other benefits such as regenerative braking which reduced friction brake maintenance requirements (*7). Internal reorganisations saw some Intercity routes moved to other sectors; Southeastern took the Gatwick Express, and Anglia took over the London to Norwich service, both in the 1990s. The broader economy hit Intercity revenues too in the early 1990s, but by 2000 the economy was soundly growing again, and passengers growing once more at a rate - helped by the growing congestion on the road network.
Intercity efforts to get weekend passengers to upgrade to first class.
The 2010s saw a host of smaller innovations aimed at improving the customer experience, which all started with the modernisation of Intercity's station lounges, with better seating, food & drink provisions, and easy access to platforms. On the trains, dot matrix displays were standard on newer Voyager trains and fitted above the seats (*8), which allowed the elimination of "paper seat reservations" where staff had to manually place reservations in each seat before the train set off from it's first station. The introduction of a the internet allowed pre-purchase of onboard food with guaranteed service (non pre-purchased food still available subject to demand and timetabling) - this allowed the first class "Great British Breakfast" to improve, with breakfast served for business people rapidly after the train departed their boarding station (*9). Much of this functionality was brought together in 2015 with an "Intercity" smartphone app, allowing the storing of tickets (scanned by QR barcode similar to an airline), food options (tea & coffee were frequently offered as standard in first class), station information, and connecting trains information (*10). Later updates would bring forth quick-purchase functionality in the applications, and also allowing access to the onboard computer via the at-seat Firewire connection, allowing the tracking of train position and up to the minute timetabling information as well as TV channels (*11). The introduction of a "frequent traveller" programme using the app to track ticket purchases allowed a better system of rewarding frequent and high-spending travellers with increased benefits (such as free seat reservations, onboard food, access to lounges and cheap upgrades to first class when seats were available). For the first time, all this meant that Intercity could truly act as a "surface airline", mirroring much of the customer service apparent in the aviation market (*12).
Nowadays, Intercity is split in to five sub-divisions:
- Pullman (*12A).
- West Coast; Intercity network centred on Birmingham
- Great Western; London to West England and South Wales
- East Coast; Intercity routes from London to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and North-East.
- Other (*12B).
The Intercity West Coast map
West Coast
The West Coast division is a merger of what was formerly the West Coast Route and CrossCountry Routes, and is by far the largest Intercity division. With Pullman extracting the crack London to Manchester and most London to Liverpool passenger market, the West Coast and CrossCountry operations (which were frequently on the West Coast Route anyway) were merged together. It is now heavily centred on Birmingham New Street, along with much of Intercity's business administration following Government initiatives to move from London, and much of New Street station is dedicated to the Intercity West Coast operations. In former days, many trains terminated here, but the merge with CrossCountry has led to many services developing and now linking across Birmingham, reducing track congestion at the station. A frequent service through Birmingham operates to London (as by far the largest English city without Pullman service), acting as the successor to the original "Inter-City" service, but with those trains now continuing to places beyond Birmingham, and further bolstered with high speed Network South East services operating to Birmingham as well (*13). CrossCountry has also seen a huge upswing during the economic growth in 2000s with regional travel; combined with the West Coast, Birmingham New Street now sees on average at least an Intercity train every 4 minutes. The slow, but continued purchase of Intercity Voyager units; a bi-mode unit able to operate on electric power and diesel power has allowed West Coast to operate now with a largely single fleet type, and eliminate the last vestiges of locomotive hauled trains by 2014. The presence of Britannia Airport on the West Coast network also provides an extra passenger source to and from a range of destinations.
Great Western
The Great Western Route, operating west from London (Paddington), is a somewhat newcomer to electric traction. It's previous "Western Region" regional operators in the days before business sectorisation favoured diesel power (and were labelled the "unwanted family" by other regions for their non-conformist points of view), and that attitude continued for a long time with diesel locomotive hauled coaches operating the route for many decades with, to be fair, a slick and streamlined operation at the termini to turn the train around, although unpowered multiple units back-to-back (to form 10 coach trains) were later utilised. Financial pressures on British Rail meant that the Great Western were forced to mostly continue utilising the trains post electrification, although modernised with newer bi-mode locomotives for several off main-line routes. The exception to this was the premier routes; London to Bristol and London to South Wales, which use modernised and renovated Pullman-1 trains, now marketed as "Clipper" trains (*14). This has aided the Great Western sector in growing profits due to the low costs for the rolling stock, low operational costs, and a route network which has been well utilised. The "M4 Corridor" sees significant congestion on the M4 motorway, whilst also seeing a large London commuter belt from much further distances than usual, which has served to bolster Great Western revenues on the faster rail service. Train congestion at London Paddington is a constant problem now however, with Chiltern Trains also sharing the station, and research is underway on solutions to this problem. Spitballed ideas have included some kind of tunnelled bypass route to take suburban trains (increasing platform availability at Paddington itself), or creating a second set of platforms adjacent to Paddington station - both expensive ideas however.
Cotswold Service: 2 trains per hour, via Swindon; 1 to Gloucester, and 1 to Worcester.
Cambrian Service: 2 trains per hour, via Swindon; 2 to Newport, Cardiff and Swansea.
Avon Service: 2 trains per hour, via Swindon; 2 to Bath and Bristol Temple Meads.
South-West Service: 2 trains per hour, via Newbury; 1 to Plymouth and 1 to Penzance.
Eastern
The Eastern Division covers the remnants of Intercity's East Coast Route from London Kings Cross to the north - and formerly to Edinburgh (although now truncated to Newcastle), as well as Midland Route operations from London St Pancras to the East Midlands. Both sets of services have been seen huge changes over the years as Pullman operations has cannibalised the Intercity market, with many of the destinations reachable via Pullman. The reduction in Leeds and Edinburgh services has freed up some capacity for more medium-range destinations; the core service from Kings Cross now sees hourly services to Lincoln, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle, with a fifth hourly service rotating around a number of smaller destinations. Similarly, services from St Pancras operate hourly to Derby & Sheffield, Nottingham, Corby and Leicester. The slower services (with faster trains via Pullman) has meant an increase in regional passengers however; an experimental Newcastle to Peterborough (via Leeds, Sheffield and Nottingham and a suite of smaller towns) has proved extremely successful. Voyager trains have now supplanted older rolling stock, and the transfer of Voyager trains from the London-Norwich route following it's handover to Anglia has allowed the Midland Route to start to receive Voyager units and replace very old locomotive hauled stock.
Midlands Service: 3 trains per hour, via Leicester; 2 to Derby & Sheffield, and 1 to Nottingham.
East Coast Service: 5 trains per hour, via Peterborough; 1 to Hull, 1 to Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Newcastle, 1 to Darlington, Durham and Newcastle, 1 to Leeds and Bradford, 1 to Lincoln.
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(*1) Roughly as per OTL.
(*2) 90mph as standard; the 1.5kV being less powerful than 25kV AC.
(*3) As evidenced throughout the TL.
(*4) It might sound like a stupid thing, but this was actually a significant set of work in OTL and often yielded great improvements as tight Victorian curves were straightened out, high speed point work installed etc etc.
(*5) During privatisation attempts, BR (in this TL) was forced to contract out several operations to the private sector, whilst also selling off some railway networks, although the full privatisation of BR was avoided.
(*6) This lack of power for higher speeds in part is what drove Pullman (with it's high speed 25kV AC) to extend further north.
(*7) Regenerative braking was possible from the early days of 1.5kV DC as it's very simple; just run the motor in reverse to slow the train and feed the DC power back in to the overhead lines (although feeding excess power back in to the electrical grid is much more complex - hence why we've seen flywheel energy storage systems crop up in this TL).
(*8) As used on Virgin Trains.
(*9) Assuming most people pre-order in order to get the food faster, this also means that most food can be prepared before the train reaches the station at which the passenger boards, allowing for demand to be spread out instead of a mad dash before the final station.
(*10) Smartphone app seems an obvious evolution given Intercity's desire to be a "surface airline" - look at the aviation market.
(*11) I doubt you'd get a media library like onboard a plane - people won't be at their seats for long enough, but a re-transmission of free-to-air TV channels seems possible for first class.
(*12) A frequent traveller programme seems to have been a major aim of Intercity; peak season tickets will likely grant some of the same perks, but frequent travellers will get the perks whilst Intercity gets better customer information.
(*12A) Covered in a separate Pullman chapter.
(*12B) Sleeper Services were covered a way back, and I'm gently considering a Royal Train chapter
(*13) Previously mentioned in a high speed Southeastern chapter; the short journey time using the London high speed link means the route from Birmingham is better suited for commuter options (operating in to Snow Hill though).
(*14) As mentioned in a previous chapter.
PS: Lots of little changes in the map if you fancy hunting!
