Talk:Cross Country Route

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DO they use turbostars on the Lickey? And are they any good for torque? I'd have thought (on the basis mind you of prejudice) you needed the flexibility of a diesel-electric to make a decent fist of the gradient?? Linuxlad 09:45, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes Central Trains use them on Nottingham-Cardiff services. (Our Phellap 13:36, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Ah yes. What speed do they do the Lickey? (the Voyagers seem to do about 60; the old 2,500 hp diesel-electrics were often struggling at 30 to 40 IIRC. (I like to set it as a work/energy problem to Year 11 students :-)) Linuxlad 13:49, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know sorry. They go quicker than the old diesel locomotives from what I recall. This may be because all carriages are motorised? (Our Phellap 13:51, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC))

NB NB - don't forget the stub Cross Country services created to lead in to all the routes through Brum with a cross-country flavour, 'drilling down' (chris j wood's nice phrase) to particular examples such as this (MR) one. In so far as the SW/NW route through Brum counts as Cross Country, it should perhaps be referenced there. Linuxlad 20:37, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

and this article talks about the second of Virgin's routes - that to Southampton. which certainly wasn't Midland: how to designate that? - Plus the Midland only went as far as Leeds on this current route: what about the NER/Cal/NBR - and the GWR? Peter Shearan 08:55, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

bhp of 'older diesels'

"many older diesels were underpowered' - this is a bit questionable as a statement - they provided 2500 bhp, just like it said they would on the can (a fun sum, within the capabilities of a competent GCSE student at Y11 :-)). And this was significantly better than the steam locos of earlier year which only did (from memory) 600 bhp. What is possibly true (IIRC ) is that a nominal 3300bhp electric loco was capable of being _over-run_ for a period, making it very useful on eg West Coast Main line... Bob aka Linuxlad 14:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

"cinderella" status

what is "cinderella" status? I'm guessing from the context maybe something to do with the fact that if it ran late it became severley delayed (turned into a pumpkin)? Is this correct? Could someone who knows expand the article please...? Tjwood 6 July 2005 10:41 (UTC)

Cinderella, though best of the bunch, usually had to play second string to her sisters. In a similar way, the cross-country route, though offering some of the longest Inter-City journeys on the network, was never actively promoted and timetabled, because of BR's structure. I recollect the phrase being Ivor Warburton's, but I may be wrong (it's many year's since the conversation, on the aforesaid route)Linuxlad

The actual route mentioned here

This would appear to include the route as follows

• various, from Cornwall, Devon, etc
• Taunton railway station
• Bristol Temple Meads railway station
• Gloucester railway station
• Cheltenham Spa railway station
• Birmingham New Street railway station
• Tamworth railway station
• Burton-on-Trent railway station
• Derby railway station
• Chesterfield railway station
• Sheffield railway station (Leeds railway station?)
• York railway station
• Darlington railway station
• Durham railway station
• Newcastle upon Tyne railway station
• Berwick upon Tweed railway station
• Edinburgh railway station
• etc

We need to identify which segments of rail are covered by which wikipedia articles already, and which aren't. The Derby-Sheffield part is part of the Midland Main Line - there is only one railway line going north from Derby, which merges with the Nottingham loop of the MML south of Chesterfield and then goes through Sheffield. The main route here then appears to go via Rotherham, Swinton/Mexborough, Pontefract, York, Northallerton, Darlington, east of Aycliffe, Durham, Chester le Street, Gateshaed, Newcastle, etc. The latter part of this is of course the East Coast Main Line. So what bits of this route correspond to what? Morwen - Talk 23:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Bits of the main XC route. Our Phellap 00:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• Plymouth-Bristol is Great Western Main Line
• Bristol-Birmingham not currently covered
• Birmingham-Derby not currently covered
• Derby-Sheffield is Midland Main Line
• Sheffield-Doncaster is covered by Sheffield to Hull Line
• Doncaster-Edinburgh is East Coast Main Line

The history of the Bristol-Gloucester-Birmingham bits are already covered IIRC. Try going via the Lickey Incline article. And people like Chevin have written extensively on the Midland Railway bits around Derby Linuxlad

Any reasons why the section of XC route North of Derby comprises Derby, Dronfield, Chesterfield and York but Sheffield and say Meadowhall, which are all equally on the MML as well as the XC? Is Dronfield predominantly on the MML or the XC, for it is on both route digram templates. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 15:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that the locations on the concurrency are shown on both diagrams, for clarity. Chris cheese whine 22:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The Virgin XC service does not stop at Meadowhall, but it does make occassional stops at Dronfield, and is indicated on the Virgin network map.   johnwalton   (talk) 21:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't see it on that map. Chris cheese whine 22:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Sheffield is on the map, but not on the route diagram on the article, however the network map only shows te main stops as station XC does serve such as Wakefield Westgate and Burton-on-Trent are not found on the map. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 23:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

New suggestion: Break off any specific parts of the route that do not already have their own historical articles, and on the diagram here list only the main stations from wherever-in-the-southwest to wherever-in-Scotland, including no junctions or connections. Pull information on key junctions and connections into the article itself as prose or a short list. Thoughts? Chris cheese whine 23:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: This should not merely end at wherever Virgin runs today, if there were historically trains from Penzance to Wick, then the strip should show the main stations on these (not even all main stations, we can link out in the article itself). Chris cheese whine 23:35, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd pretty much agree with the above. There should certainly be a mention of historical stops/routes in the article, but I think the schematic map should only show stations currently served. Virgin stop at Dronfield once a day, the stop is shown on the above link if you select "network view" or on the relevant timetable, but they don't make a stop at Meadowhall.   johnwalton   (talk) 10:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

There still is no mention of Burton on Trent or Sheffield in the line diagram... The Virgin XC network map is off topic considering the header in the article which states that this is not the article concerning XC services but the historical line, on which many stops are missing and others arbitrarily chosen. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 11:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Sources

There is nothing on this page which could be disputed or cited. I don't understand the tag at the top of this page. Everything here is backed up by other Wikipedia articles. Mojo29 23:23, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Route?

Doesn't the cross country route go to Penzance, Aberdeen and Glasgow? Dewarw 09:44, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I had always thought of it in those terms - certainly when I first used to travel it regularly in the early 70s most of the big trains were going North beyond Sheffield and South beyond Exeter (and that's still true for VT3 I think). The Cardiff route was always a bit of a branch-line Bob aka Linuxlad 15:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

CrossCountry

In the new Cross Country franchise this route does not even exist anymore, Mark999 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark999 (talk • contribs) 21:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Cardiff - Nottingham

Would this route be part of the cross-country route? as most of its route is on the current ccr and will be operated by crosscountry very soon Mark999 13:12, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

The section from Cardiff to Gloucester is GW rather than Midland, so probably shouldn't be on the map in the first place. 90.203.45.244 18:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Separation

This article confuses the "Cross Country Route", as in the Midland line from Bristol to Derby and beyond, with the "Cross Country Franchise", as in the long-distance services running across it, and "CrossCountry", the current franchisee. The three need to be separated out somewhat. 90.203.45.244 (talk) 21:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Most lines have separate articles for their modern line and their historical constituents. For instance Midland Main Line is different from North Midland Railway etc. Here, for instance, Bristol to Gloucester Railway has acquired a template of lines which were never part of the original line. The actual modern line could be considered Derby (milepost zero) to Westerleigh Junction outside Bristol. I would suggest a separate article (though I cant think of a name) as it is today, and referring historically to its constituents: Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway, Birmingham and Gloucester Railway and Bristol and Gloucester Railway. 86.145.166.29 (talk) 13:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I've drafted out something very roughly in User:Chevin/Sandbox. Any comments would be welcome. Chevin (talk) 15:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Worcester?

Do we have a source to say Worcester is actually on the CCR? It seems like an odd diversion to me, especially given that the rest of it has no diversions whatsoever, and Worcester's hardly a big place. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:11, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Template transclusion problem

There are currently problems with template transclusion in this article, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Cross Country Route. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:58, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

As at least a temporary fix I've moved the route diagram out to a separate page (Cross Country Route diagram) so that the rest of the templates in the article (including reference citations) can be displayed. If someone wishes to improve the links and formatting they are, of course, welcome to do so. --David Biddulph (talk) 15:56, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

As even that separate diagram hit the template transclusion size limit after a number of changes by other editors, I have now split the diagram into two parts, Cross Country Route (North) and Cross Country Route (South). --David Biddulph (talk) 00:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 15 February 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move to an as-of-yet undetermined destination. The consensus is clearly to move the page (removing the Title Case), but there is no firm consensus about where to move it. I suggest a new discussion (possibly an RFC) to determine the new location. Primefac (talk) 14:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

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Cross Country Route → Cross-country route – Or possibly some better name. I can't find any evidence of the current title, capped and punctuated thus, in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 15:59, 15 February 2017 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 07:37, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Indeed. This February 2015 article about the full 13 and a half hour, 785-mile journey does not even mention the term "cross-country". Per § CrossCountry, in the new Cross Country franchise this route does not even exist anymore. That would be the CrossCountry (camel case, a train operating company) franchise. Per CrossCountry § Routes, Aberdeen and Penzance are not on a basic route, but rather are extensions to the basic service pattern. See CrossCountry network map. Cross Country services (proper name, but not camel case), appears to be an article about the franchiser, rather than the franchisee (CrossCountry), but we don't have much sourcing about the franchiser (the British government?) either. Cross-country route seems too generic. There are many countries with cross-country routes, and many cross-country routes within a given country. These cross-country routes could be rail lines, or they could be roads, or even perhaps footpaths. Maybe Aberdeen–Penzance rail route? – wbm1058 (talk) 18:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• The hatnote on this says This article is about the railway line from Bristol to York. Template:Cross Country Route RDT has York at the top and Bristol Temple Meads at the bottom. But Cross Country services § Current Cross Country services has:
  • The Cross Country Route (CrossCountry): since 1921. Penzance and for main summer holiday days other resorts of Cornwall — Birmingham — Sheffield — Leeds — Newcastle upon Tyne — Edinburgh — Aberdeen.

Something has to be done to clear up this muddle. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:39, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Gotta love those spaced em dashes, too; fixed that. Dicklyon (talk) 18:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

And I will happily withdraw this RM proposal in favor of a better name if someone proposes one that's likely to achieve consensus. Or we can just work it out in this discussion, perhaps. Dicklyon (talk) 19:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• It's certainly not the CrossCountry Route, as franchises are temporary. I don't see any better name for this. Unless someone can come up with a specific name then I see no reason to move from one imperfect name to another. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:19, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• I have a feeling that the problem here is the existence of this article at all, rather than the title. Despite having travelled on the route many times, I am having trouble finding evidence of its notability as a coherent whole, apart from the franchise as covered at CrossCountry. RGloucester — ☎ 19:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• I'm more concerned about hashing out the scope of the article than the title, at the moment. A couple of Americans here, not particularly knowledgeable about the details of British rail operations. So, for an overview I start at Inter-city rail in the United Kingdom: "After the sectorisation of British Rail, inter-city trains were operated by InterCity (British Rail). InterCity ran numerous Cross Country services, which were inter-city services that traversed several regions. The InterCity Cross-Country division operated services between city pairs that used a combination of the various main lines, but usually avoided Greater London; many of these served the Cross Country Route (MR)." (MR) means Midland Railway. Per InterCity (British Rail) § Main destinations, the Cross Country Route extended from Penzance to Aberdeen. Per InterCity (British Rail) § Privatisation, the InterCity Cross Country franchise was originally awarded to Virgin CrossCountry, which initially operated a route VT4: Aberdeen and Edinburgh Waverley through Birmingham New Street to Cardiff, Swansea, Paignton and Penzance, but that route was dropped by the time CrossCountry took over the franchise from Virgin. Now CrossCountry route 1 goes from Plymouth to Edinburgh Waverley, with extensions on both ends to get to Penzance and Aberdeen. An early version of the article acknowledged the ambiguity of the term: The term cross country route can clearly be a generic one; it is usually used on the English network to refer to the main routes through Birmingham, currently franchised to Virgin Trains. Principal amongst these is the North-East/South-West route through Birmingham, Derby and Sheffield, built by the Midland Railway (MR). Other routes will be added as links. So where and why did the idea come about that the Cross Country Route was just from Bristol to York, rather than Penzance to Aberdeen? wbm1058 (talk) 20:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• "Route simplified to show Cross Country Route only." (Bristol–York) 19 November 2007. wbm1058 (talk) 20:57, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Maybe even Bristol to York is too long. This issue goes way back. Although the 8 February 2007 version said it "includes" some of the longest inter-city rail journeys in the UK, eg Penzance to Aberdeen, the infobox of that version focuses on "the core Bristol-Birmingham-Derby route" (Bristol-Birmingham-Derby Line redirects to here). This article may exist because of the line's 'Cinderella' status. Cardiff Central to Newcastle Line also redirects to here, and although historical versions of the article included Cardiff, there is no mention of that city in the current version. wbm1058 (talk) 21:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

  The Bristol-York bit has its origins in the predecessors of the Midland Railway (MR), created in 1844 by amalgamation; successive amalgamations brought other railways into the MR. A whole chain of railways linked Bristol with Leeds (from south to north, these were: the Bristol & Gloucester; the Birmingham & Gloucester; the Birmingham & Derby Junction; and the North Midland) and all were part of the MR by the end of 1846. At Normanton, the York & North Midland was a close ally, but did not become part of the MR - it amalgamated with others in 1854 to create the North Eastern Railway, but the close relationship remained, and so MR trains (and those of its successor, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway) were never denied access to York. The route north from York, and that south from Bristol, were in the hands of other companies right down to 1948, although through trains ran much earlier - particularly in the summer.

  It's not even accurate to describe it as Aberdeen-Penzance (or even Penzance-Aberdeen); when originally introduced, and for at least thirty years, the Aberdeen-Penzance service didn't use the MR route, and didn't even run via Birmingham - its route between York and Exeter was via Sheffield Victoria, Leicester Central, Banbury, Oxford and Swindon. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:47, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, let's work out the scope and come up with a better name; but in any case, we don't make up proper names, so unless we find a better name, let's downcase this one (and put the hyphen as most sources do). Dicklyon (talk) 23:04, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• Looks as if the consensus is to move for now. Other article issues exist, but that doesn't justify the current bad name. Homunq (࿓) 14:21, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Move - Cross country route is a generic definition, as per example. Suggesting Bristol to Leeds "something" (route/railway/rail link/...). --Robertiki (talk) 13:05, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Wait a minute. When I worked on the railways many years ago, the route was generally called the "North East-South West", abbreviated to "NE-SW" or "NE/SW". There are plenty of references to that - [1], a lot of which are railfan pages, but many aren't as well [2] [3] Page 10 of this. Rather than move it from one wrong name to another, why not at least move it to one with some references? (btw, NE/SW generally referred to Newcastle-Penzance, and didn't involve Scotland, although that may have been because cross-country services from Scotland in those days generally ran via Edinburgh, Carstairs and the WCML). Black Kite (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Edit: just found this from CrossCountry themselves, referring to it as such - [4]. Black Kite (talk) 16:26, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

But North East - South West route is also pretty generic. That doc calls it "CrossCountry's North East - South West route". The same description is applied in sources to various other lines. Dicklyon (talk) 03:25, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

• Relisting in the hope that we can still get a consensus to move somewhere because there seems to be agreement the current title is not ideal. Jenks24 (talk) 07:37, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
• Suggest "CrossCountry North East – South West route", on the theory that a) CrossCountry is a proper name (the business name), "North East – South West" is allegedly a proper name (trademark designation of the rail service in question), and "route" is just a descriptor. I would also be okay with lowercasing the middle part if it isn't really a service trademark and is also just descriptive. Putting CrossCountry first is natural disambiguation and resolves any concern about the generic nature of the rest of it. All that said, I tend to agree with RGloucester that the problem really may be that this is a bogus article that isn't about any one thing, but is a conglomeration of stuff that needs to be in separate articles. It looks to me rather like trying to write an article on "the Oakland – San José route", which is really just one of numerous paths one can use to get around the San Francisco Bay Area, traversing at least three different transit systems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:19, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

@Wbm1058, RGloucester, SMcCandlish, Jenks24, Black Kite, Robertiki, Redrose64, and Mattbuck: We never did finish picking a name after the consensus that this needed to move, about 5 years ago. Any good ideas? SMcCandlish had suggested CrossCountry North East – South West route which might be as good as any, though more concise might be nice. I'm going to be on the road for a while; might check back and see if there's any further ideas, and if not maybe I'll just move to that one. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I am happy to move the article but CrossCountry North East – South West route sounds a bit too wordy for my liking. I would prefer "to" rather than the dash. Would NE to SW be allowed under wiki criteria? GRALISTAIR (talk) 22:39, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Years ago there was a consensus to use the dash instead of "to" in railway naming, for symmetry. But I'd be happy with CrossCountry NE–SW route. Dicklyon (talk) 23:48, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

That seems fine, and goes well with WP:CONCISE. I think we can assume that the basic direction abbreviations are well-known enough to use them in titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me but I suggest there is a bit more consensus than just us two 23:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC) GRALISTAIR (talk) 00:03, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe the issue is that this route doesn't even exist. It might be a service route, but it's a whole lot of lines: Bristol to Gloucester, Birmingham to Derby, Midland Main Line, etc. -mattbuck (Talk) 09:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Given the 3 of us that are OK with it, and the consensus on the need to move, I went ahead and moved to CrossCountry NE–SW route. If anyone disagrees and has a better idea, go for it. Dicklyon (talk) 18:06, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not very satisfied with the new title or the level of consensus for it. CrossCountry NE–SW route is contrived, seems like a very unlikely search term and frankly would look made up by Wikipedians (a bit like the Sutton and Mole Valley lines). This is inevitable with York-Bristol actually being a collection of lines but you still need a concise and recognisable name. The archived discussion above seems to have arrived at no particular consensus for what to move the page to, with nothing strongly pulling towards NE/SW. Having had no proper discussion for five years - an RfC or at least notification at WP:UKRAIL wouldn't have gone amiss - I'm not sure how much you can say that closure reflects the opinion of editors today.

As far as I can see the main issue was with treating CrossCountry as a proper route title when it is only a franchise holder. I think we need to keep things simple; if the original title is still found intolerable, then pairing the franchise name with a capital R to avoid the possiblility of being confused with generic routes that could be anywhere to create Cross Country Route would seem best to me. But my first vote is to stick where we were until this has been resolved with more voices than the few who have contributed so far. It's a major route with a lot of inbound links and we ought to make a good and considered decision. Rcsprinter123 (interact) 22:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's a terrible convoluted title, and there was no attempt to notify a wider pool of editors before a decision was unilatterlly made to move it. G-13114 (talk) 00:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 17 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus; reverting back to previous stable title. The history of this article's title is a messy one, so before getting into my own rationale, I want to include a timeline of the titling history for reference:

Timeline

The article was created on 31 March 2005, originally under the title Cross Country Route (MR). On 8 February 2007, the article was moved to the title Cross Country Route. The move was executed via technical request, so while it was not formally discussed, there was slightly more vetting than a standard WP:BOLD move. On 15 February 2017, an RM was opened, proposing that the title be moved to "Cross-country route". The RM was closed on 13 March 2017 with a result of "Move to an as-of-yet undetermined destination" (effectively a WP:NOTCURRENTTITLE close, though I don't know if that section of WP:RMCI had been written yet). The closer did not move the article to any title themselves. On 26 March 2017 (13 days after the RM closure), the title was WP:BOLDly moved to UK cross-country route; the choice of destination title was not discussed previously, and the mover identified it as an "interim title" in their edit summary. On 6 May 2017, the article was reverted to the title Cross Country Route, after a brief talk page discussion showed that some users disliked the new title. On 10 April 2022, the issue of the article title was raised again informally. After Special:PermanentLink/1083214789#Requested move 15 February 2017#a brief discussion, the article was moved to CrossCountry NE–SW route on 17 April 2022. Later in the month, other users who had missed the discussion expressed objections to the move. The current RM was opened on 17 August 2023.

Within the RM discussion, I've seen opposition to the current title and the proposed title, but little willingness to expressly support any given title. The main arguments that pertain to these titles seem to be as follows:

• Multiple users expressed that the current title fails WP:NATURAL, with one describing it as contrived and another calling it a cumbersome mess.
• It was noted that proper names tended to be used for other UK train lines (e.g. East Coast Main Line, West Coast Main Line), suggesting that the proposed move would align with WP:CONSISTENT.
• It was argued that the title "Cross Country Route" is not used in sources, an appeal to WP:COMMONNAME.
• Concerns about WP:RECOGNIZABILITY were raised in several forms:
  • One user argued that the proposed title was too vague to be applicable, arguing that readers unfamiliar with the topic area would be uncertain that the article subject was a train route in the first place. This line of argument was disputed by another participant, who argued for this topic being the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Cross Country Route".
  • One user argued that the "Cross Country Route" would be assumed by average UK readers to refer to the Plymouth–Aberdeen line (contra the article, which focuses on Bristol–York).
  • One user argued that the current title being perceived as unnatural also speaks to its lack of recognizability.

In summary, the current title is regarded as a poor title and the proposed title is regarded as a poor title; alternate titles were raised in one comment, only to be shot down in the same message that initially proposed them. This discussion did not result in a consensus for any title.

However, one participant did make the argument that – in the absence of consensus – the best course of action would be moving back to the most longstanding established title, which was Cross Country Route. I find myself convinced by this argument, for two principal reasons. First, although the current title has been in place for nearly a year and a half, it is also true that "Cross Country Route" has been the title for approximately 15 years throughout the article's history, indicating a strong level of stability. Second, the discussion that led this article to be moved to its current title had little publicity and few participants, and opposition emerged not long after the move went through; thus, any consensus to adopt the "CrossCountry NE–SW route" title was a very weak one in the first place.

Finally, just as a reminder about RM norms: because this proposal ended in a no-consensus result, participants should not feel dissuaded from opening a follow-up RM if they would like to propose a not-previously-discussed title for the article. We may not have found the ideal title for this article yet, but one may still exist out there somewhere. (closed by non-admin page mover) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

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CrossCountry NE–SW route → Cross Country Route – Per my comments of last April (above). The consensus was not there to move away from the old title, with no widely-publised RM and I happen to think the renaming was a mistake. Ping Dicklyon, GRALISTAIR, SMcCandlish, Black Kite, wbm1058. Rcsprinter123 (notify) 21:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

By the way, those pings did not work, even after being re-tried. I check my notifications, and found nothing. Dicklyon (talk) 04:00, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

As I have explained on many occasions, there needs to be a new signed post that includes the links to all of the users that you wish to notify, and it all needs to be done in the same edit. This failed to notify wbm1058 because it's a modification to an existing post, and not a new post. As for post&oldid= , the only thing that I can think of is that Rcsprinter123 uses a templated sig (albeit one that is WP:SUBSTd), and not one where all of the wikimarkup is contained in the custom signature box. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:41, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support Cumbersome mess of a title we have at present. G-13114 (talk) 21:29, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Trains has been notified of this discussion. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

CrossCountry routes, including the Cross Country Route

• Comment The long-standing franchise currently operated by CrossCountry covers several routes, some of which head NW–SE and barely touch the CrossCountry NE–SW route by crossing it at Birmingham. Can we find an even better title? Bristol-Birmingham-Derby Line redirects there, but isn't ideal (terminates short of York; wrong sort of dash), and I think something like Cross Country core route might fail WP:COMMONNAME. Certes (talk) 16:18, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• Question – What does CrossCountry call it, if anything? What do other reliable sources call it? I'm not into researching it at the moment. The problem before was that this title dressed up as a proper name did not seem to come from sources. Does it now? Dicklyon (talk) 03:33, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• OK, I think I might have gotten a ping for this earlier which I may have forgotten about, but I just got (another?) one now so will add my top-of-the head thoughts. I'm annoyed to see that this still hasn't been settled after all these years, and annoyed to see fellow American Dicklyon still pushing the envelope (I saw that your AWB rights were just taken away for editing too fast without the expected care) with his lower-case titles everywhere agenda which continues to disrupt local consensuses that favored proper names. I'd rather let my fellow British editors who are most familiar with the topic decide. Part of the issue with this as I recall was defining the endpoints of what is considered the "cross country" route. The longest in the UK being Aberdeen–Penzance. A popular trip for extreme rail tourists which has been written about in travel magazines and such. But the scope of the article seems to have been defined as the main high-speed connection between Bristol and York. Noting that the other major rail lines in the UK are known by proper names, e.g. East Coast Main Line and West Coast Main Line then if you have sources that call this particular route, with well-defined endpoints of Bristol and York, Cross Country Route, then yes, move it there. That would make this the Cross Country Route operated by the operator CrossCountry; two distinct names, the rail line and the operator being different with the operator using camel case. I have a sense that the name of the operator has been crowbarred into the title in order to support the objective of keeping the title a proper name. As with the East and West main lines, CrossCountry is just one of several operators, and we don't name the others as "CrossCountry East Coast Main Line" and the like. I think Dicklyon would prefer to keep all proper names out of all British rail article titles, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has already proposed moving to "UK east coast main rail line" and this article title would be fully-Lyonized by a move to "UK cross country rail route" or "UK NE–SW cross country rail route". The thing that makes this line a bit different than the East and West is the ambiguity about the end points which might support moving to a lower-case title in the plural form to support having both Aberdeen–Penzance and Bristol–York in the same article, i.e. UK cross country routes. But I don't really care enough about this enough to want to spend more months or years debating it. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:58, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

  If you'd talk less about me and more about the questions at hand, we might make progress. I have no agenda to keep proper names out of titles, just don't want to cap things that are not proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

  The problem is that this needs to be a proper name. "Cross Country Route" is a proper name because it refers to a specific rail route, while "cross country route" is a generic term that could refer to many disparate things. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

• One more point. If this ends up being another "no consensus" then I'd say that means moving back to the most longstanding established title, which was Cross Country Route. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:00, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
• I agree with Certes above. Also, the proposed title, "Cross Country Route", is vague. It is confusing for unrelated readers. "Cross Country Route" of what, and where? Is it route of some cycling/motor sports? The proposed title doesn't answer that. Also, even if there is a hint about it being a train-route, the first train system/service/operator that comes to mind is TGV. "CrossCountry" is the operator here, so the title should add something about the route itself to avoid confusion/surprise. I am not opposed to moving to a better title, but the proposed title does not seem to an improvement, hence an oppose. —usernamekiran (talk) 03:38, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

  The above is essentially an argument for abolishing WP:Primary topic. All primary topics are, by definition, vague at some level. East Coast Main Line is vague. It could, theoretically, refer to a train running from Miami to Boston. West Coast Main Line is also vague, bringing to mind a train running from San Diego to Seattle or Vancouver. Cross Country Route (disambiguation) is a page that doesn't exist yet; therefore by definition, the title is unambiguous on Wikipedia and anyone living in the UK should be familiar with the term. "Cross Country Route" of what, and where? is a question which is answered by the lead sentence of the article. We don't expect our readers to immediately know what all 6+ million articles are about from just reading their titles; we expect them to read the ledes. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

• Here's a question for our UK editors. If you ask random people on the street, "what is the name of the rail line that connects Bristol and York?", if the typical answer you get is "Cross Country Route", then keep the longstanding title (move the page back). If, rather you hear, "I don't know", or "Bristol–York line, I guess", then move it there. If they say, "CrossCountry NE–SW route" then keep the current title. I doubt that would be a frequent answer, as our British friends seem to be telling us that this is a contrived title. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:59, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
  • To turn this around, if you asked them "Where does the Cross Country Route run between?", they'd say "Plymouth to Aberdeen". The fact that the section between Bristol and York is considered to be a separate line is known only to rail enthusiasts. Tevildo (talk) 19:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

UK?

Why is the suffix of UK now added to the title? To me, that seems less like a railway line and more like a description of a bunch of lines. Could I have some context as to why it had UK added, as I can't find it in the section above. Nathan A RF (talk) 09:55, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the rail line(s) is/are in the UK. I don't think that country has a monopoly on the term "cross-country route" (whether that's a proper name or not), so "UK" is needed for disambiguation. Of course, one could argue that the UK has many cross-country routes, not just the one described in this article. The comments in the closed discussion above about the difficulty in clearly identifying the scope of the article are directly relevant to our difficulty in determining an adequate title of the article. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:03, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

So after a move discussion doesn't get anywhere, Dicklyon decides to go to some random title which has never been used by anyone with a disambiguation which is unnecessary. I'm going to revert. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:34, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that was a truly terrible choice for a name. G-13114 (talk) 13:27, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

At the moment, I don't see any good choices for the title, so we have to settle for the best of the lot of poor choices. Really, the only way to solve this long-term is to focus on the content, and the title should then follow from that. Note that although I have this on my watchlist, I haven't checked in since the last discussion. wbm1058 (talk) 16:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

In that case, probably best just to leave it where it has been for years. It's as good as anything. G-13114 (talk) 04:24, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

As the close noted, there was a clear consensus to move. So moving back to the title with inappropriate caps among other problems can hardly be considered progress. Do you not have any better ideas? Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: It says "to an as-of-yet undetermined destination". No destination was subsequently discussed; and yet you moved it to a name which you decided upon yourself, without first consulting anybody else, which was clearly in breach of your previous warnings about moving pages without discussion. Indeed, less than four days before you moved the page, you were given this note by Useddenim (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Lead

"The Cross Country Route is a long-distance rail route in the United Kingdom that has in its central part superseded the Midland Railway." What does this mean? The Midland Railway ceased to exist in 1922. It was superseded by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, not by the Cross Country Route. What is this important first sentence trying to say? 87.75.117.183 (talk) 13:53, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

You're right it was gobbledegook, I've removed it. G-13114 (talk) 18:29, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Electrification section update

This section was/is out of date. I have made a start updating it and will try and complete in next few days GRALISTAIR (talk) 20:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC) I have updated but if someone can check my work that would be good GRALISTAIR (talk) 01:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Why no inclusion of SE (Reading) or NW (Manchester/Liverpool/Scotland via WCML) arms?

Just bringing up an old discussion again which was first raised a good number of years ago now.

I always understood the InterCity Cross-Country network to be all four arms of the 'X' out of Birmingham. Certainly in the 80s people referred to the Reading services as "cross-country", and obviously the Reading services as well as Manchester became part of Virgin Cross Country later. Thus services on the Reading, Manchester/Liverpool and Scotland via WCML axes should surely be included here. By the start of the 80s much of what we now know as the Cross-Country network was complete, including several daily services from Poole and Brighton and several from Bristol and Cardiff to Manchester and Liverpool. Even by 1973 there were three daily services from Hampshire (which combined with Paddington-Birmingham to give an almost-hourly service from Reading to Birmingham) and several on the SW-NW route.

There's now quite a bit of detailed publicly-available info about BR Cross-Country services in the 70s and 80s (specifically the years 1973, 1981 and 1982 on Timetable World, and a wide range of years for the Brighton services on 1s76.com) and this article seems the obvious place to put it - but much of it involves the northwestern and southeastern arms.

I suspect there are a good number of people who are not so interested in the current Arriva TOC but want to find out about the historical services on the 'X' (e.g. BR and Virgin pre-Princess) and restricting the discussion to the SW-NE half of the system seems to me unnecessarily limiting.

If it can't go here, where should historical (BR, early Virgin) info about the whole system (including NW and SE arms) go?

2A02:85F:9A59:2800:675D:A849:FF2:BF71 (talk) 15:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)