(10 May 2024, 4:02 pm)markydh wrote The Sunderland late evening service terminates at Newcastle on a semi-regular basis ever since Covid and the subsequent industrial relations breakdown. It’s not what you would call reliable and getting rid of a service that only exists for political reasons is the smart move. What I will say is it’s currently the final heavy rail service of the day between Newcastle and Sunderland so it’ll likely have to be replaced by a Northern train to maintain the connection.

There is a Northern service which departs just 12 mins earlier ar 2248 and continues from Sunderland to Hartlepool, so maybe just redirext customers to that one, or they may delay departure of it.

GC have announced a £300m deal with Hitachi and Angel Trains.

Nine tri-mode sets will be purchased.

(03 Apr 2025, 10:58 am)Andreos1 wrote GC have announced a £300m deal with Hitachi and Angel Trains.

Nine tri-mode sets will be purchased.

Nice to see them actually investing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce92myvk7m8o

An interesting proposal from GC.

A great link to Gatwick

(25 Apr 2025, 9:06 pm)Andreos1 wrote https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce92myvk7m8o

An interesting proposal from GC.

Looking at that route, it seems that they want to take over the Reading to Newcastle, Crosscountry services as an open access operator. It's basically the route and calling points it does now. I guess the extension to Brighton is to claim it does something different but something in the back of my head says they used to do this, or something similar years ago anyway.

(26 Apr 2025, 8:53 am)Storx wrote Looking at that route, it seems that they want to take over the Reading to Newcastle, Crosscountry services as an open access operator. It's basically the route and calling points it does now. I guess the extension to Brighton is to claim it does something different but something in the back of my head says they used to do this, or something similar years ago anyway.

They did, can't remember its terminus point, I want to say it was withdrawn in 2003 (ish)

(26 Apr 2025, 8:53 am)Storx wrote Looking at that route, it seems that they want to take over the Reading to Newcastle, Crosscountry services as an open access operator. It's basically the route and calling points it does now. I guess the extension to Brighton is to claim it does something different but something in the back of my head says they used to do this, or something similar years ago anyway.

Certainly back in British Rail days there were cross-country services from the South Coast to the north-west and north-east - I recall Poole, Brighton and Ramsgate as starting points.  The Brightons were, I think, cut back to Gatwick Airport later.

could have done with that route this weekend coming!