Why are you people complaining? I live near Wigan and we dont have any direct cross country services, you should think yourselves lucky you have hourly services!

   weekend virgin trains service to London currently go via birmingham due to long term west coast modernisation enhancements

   I'm confused, I thought Macc-London trains didnt go via Birmingham - if Arriva have taken the Birmingham route from Virgin why would their plans affect Virgins weekend Manc-London route? Can anyone explain?

   before people get too hot and bothered by this, I think we need the full picture. One reason why this might actually be occuring is because the department for transport have for once made a sensible decision to reintroduce a full Manchester - Stoke-on-trent local service throughout the day. For this to happen it requires a lot of pathing re-organisation which is already going on in time for the december 2008 timetable. It takes 22 minutes for a local train to clear the Stockport to Macclesfield section compared to 12 minutes for arriva and virgin. It then takes 26 minutes for a local service to clear the macclesfield - stoke section compared to 15 minutes for a virgin or cross country service.

This means some alterations are needed to allow for a 100% all round rail service which meets the needs of everyone. The reason for one crosscountry service going non-stop could be seen as a way of accelerating it to get it out of the way. I think the way cross country need to allowed to address overcrowding effiecivly is by getting some of the 1000 train carridges that the government have promised will be introduced to the network in the next 3 to five years.

I would also say that Nicholas winterton needs to have a meeting with the department for transport and all the train companies: arriva,northern and virgin as this report seems to suggest he's only discuissed it with one.