THE VALUE OF A TRAIN IS IN THE INTERMEDIATE STOPS.

That has long been a Cold Spring Shops argument, with the primary focus on the interior of the United States.  For instance, "West of Galesburg, Ill., only a handful of coach passengers are California-bound, but virtually every seat is occupied with people going to Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado stops. They are replaced later with others headed to Denver, but also to Grand Junction, Colo.; Helper, Provo, and Salt Lake City in Utah; plus Sacramento, Martinez, and Emeryville in California."  Or, in elaboration,

Trains' Malcolm Kenton makes the point.  "A long-distance train should be thought of as serving multiple corridors with one vehicle, thus minimizing the net unit costs of equipment and crews by spreading them out over more passenger-miles. Instead of thinking of the Southwest Chief as a Chicago-Los Angeles train, for example, think of it as Chicago-Kansas City, Kansas City-Newton/Wichita, La Junta-Albuquerque and Flagstaff-Los Angeles corridors, and many more, all rolled into one."  Yup.  Connectivity matters too.

That comes as a bit of a surprise to an observer of Britain's residual Cross Country services. "The distances covered by their trains can be significant with Aberdeen to Penzance at just over 500 miles taking over 13 hours being the longest train ride in Britain. The duration of the train rides means that one train could actually be used for morning commuting and later in the day evening commuting i.e. the trains serve many different markets." The current Cross Country map puts all the Scotland services on the old London and North Eastern line, whilst once upon a time the map of the service looked like Conrail's "X" with the crossing at Birmingham, rather than Cleveland.  And yes, a shopper bound for Plymouth, Bristol, or Edinburgh in the morning might be returning on the opposite working of that train later in the day with the train being more of an Aberdeen - Edinburgh, Edinburgh - Birmingham, Birmingham - Bristol, Bristol - Plymouth, and Plymouth - Penzance, only with additional puddle jumpers or corridor trains run by other operators fleshing out the timetable.  That appears to be the way Cross Country view the trains, as well.  "It does appear that Cross Country do not want long distance passengers on its trains and prices its tickets accordingly. The reason for this is a lack of capacity on its network at key times of the day. Long-distance passengers travelling on cheap advance fares would simply clog up the trains."  Well, if you didn't run fixed formations, you wouldn't have that problem, but adding or cutting cars, whether at Michigan City or Birmingham, has become a lost art.  Thus people might be flying, as the elapsed time is better, or driving, despite the road fatigue.  "With the demise of many inter-regional city air connections pre and during Covid , a major opportunity for rail to step up to the plate and offer a sound alternative to the pre-Covid 19 air travel option has been missed. There will be lots of very tired long-distance motorway drivers and more air passengers."  (There's apparently an arbitrage opportunity here, as it's possible to book tickets for segments of the journey and string 'em together to go over a longer part of the run for cheaper!)

Ultimately, though, it's about frequency, dependability, and having space available at the times people want to travel.  "The longer term solution, in my opinion, is for Cross Country to get more trains to offer more seats and relieve capacity constraints in their network and thus allow them to offer better value long distance fares."  That's the same whether you're doing the Aberdeen to Penzance for the thrills, or you're banking on a six minute connection to go from Vienna to London in a day, or you're going to take a couple of days away from the grid on the Empire Builder.