Cross Country services on the British rail network carry passengers between regions on routes avoiding London termini. History Background The world's first twin-track inter-urban passenger railway in which all the trains were timetabled and ticketed was the Liverpool to Manchester Railway. This line, in 1830, greatly reduced journey times between the two cities and provided a major freight link. This captured the mind of venture capitalists and led to many more Railways in the United Kingdom than operate today. This was at a time when those cities were separated by a bumpy and circuitous road bypassing Chat Moss with divergent main industries: shipping of goods/materials and shipbuilding in the case of Liverpool and textile mills in Manchester thus in economic terms this line can be considered inter-regional. The first cross-country route avoided requiring co-operation between existing operators however still connected rival operators' tracks to the same terminus city, London, and was the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's Manchester and Leeds Railway which was constructed in 1847. Early inter-regional co-operation As railway building rapidly accelerated the role of the capital city grew and lines tended to radiate from it with companies attempting to restrain other operators from constructing railways within their particular directional sector or narrow territory. However, as railways surged in many directions to new destinations it became increasingly difficult to stop completely major incursions into envisaged territory, instead of total resistance, co-operation to mitigate the impact such incursions often yielded better results for passengers and operators - with interchange stations between such rival operators such as in Birmingham and Westbury, Wiltshire providing for wider connections. Although a few major railways were partially used by Cross Country services by process of agreement, most cross-operator services formed an exclusive complementary service by being involving two railways in series, i.e. each as a continuation of the next. A highly successful and economically cohesive example of this was the West Coast Main Line which worked in conjunction with Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Joint Railway and another in Scotland to timetable services from London Euston to the Belfast ferry at Stranraer. During the 1920s the Liberal and Labour Governments identified unacceptable railway costs, with more than 100 operators, and a national interest desire to achieve better economies of scale led to major statutory Grouping in 1923 almost wholly into the Big Four. This for instance made the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway by law become subsumed into