This would be a route set in 2019 like most other modern routes and this is a suggestion that would add some much needed variety to birmingham new street and Derby Midland while also giving us a beautiful route with some new trains to play with. It would be around 75 miles long with the stations including: Derby Willington Burton on trent Tamworth Wilnecote(Staffordshire) Birmingham New Street University(Birmingham) Worcestershire Parkway Cheltenham Spa Depots would be Central Rivers Near Burton On Trent And possibly Tyseley for the 170s but I highly doubt that Let's get onto the Locos For the fast runs: Class 220 For the semi Fast and Slow services Class 170 Layers: NTP, HFP and TVL heritage runs Class 66 for freight on WCML at Tamwoth and on the bcc from King's Norton Also BCC of course on the cross city line between new street and Bromsgrove Making these drivable would ruin the point of bcc so I suggest they would be AI on both routes AI 170s and 220s on bcc and AI 323s on XCML GWE HSTs and 166s can be seen between Worcestershire Parkway and Cheltenham Spa these could be drivable but they would be like the 375 services on London Commuter And of course AI of HSTs and 158s at Derby While also adding drivable 170 services between Derby and Nottingham and AI 170s at Leicester and AI 220s at Derby overall a quite exciting route for undeadness if that's even a word? Lemme Know what you think
Also I'm more excited about the potential of drivable 170s and ai 220s on mml tbh but yeah would definitely resurrect bcc a bit after all the backlash it got
For me this route would have to be done when the Peaks were the common traction for the NE/SW cross country services.
I like the idea of the layers but Cheltenham isn’t really an end point, it would probably be better to stop the route at Birmingham or even start there and go to Bristol and have AI take over as that is where most driver changes happen.
