the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, one of these four. As such Cross Country services from an early slight blossoming in the 1880s were free to develop within and even across these four regions, without fear of facing intense competition to strategic routes. Major cooperation Inspired by such a radical reform, the Aberdeen to Penzance Through Service a distance of 785 miles (1256 km), covering as the crow flies was inaugurated on 3 October 1921 and briefly used the track of seven different railway companies. The service was maintained by adding or removing the through coaches from trains already running on the routes: one coach of North British Railway stock, was added to an Aberdeen-London express, and was detached from it at York, where the train was made up with the addition of more coaches and sleeping cars to complete the journey. During the 1930s, when competition from the roads became fierce and with the growth of the permission of week-long holidays and coastal resorts, trains were being operated from the North of England to the South Coast, and from and through the Midlands to other resorts on the east and west coasts. Trains usually one of the leading Big Four companies consisted of rakes of coaches and were hauled by locomotives that were sometimes changed when crossing from one company to another. Post re-privatisation As before the statutory Grouping of 1923 in today's slightly less fractured rail system Cross Country routes instead necessitate commercial negotiation and cooperation between the operating companies as such services cross from one company's operating area to others. Current Cross Country services Franchises are granted periodically on a territorial basis so present a degree, as in the United States, of monopoly in many regions however Britain has a significant overlap of areas providing for certain competition, such as on the West Coast Main Line and several joint ventures exist to provide inter-regional direct routes spanning the areas of more than one of these franchise zones. Examples of the cross-country services operating currently or in the recent past include: 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. South Coast–Birmingham–Northern England and Scotland (CrossCountry): Bournemouth–Reading–Birmingham–Manchester (Extended regularly to Edinburgh via Newcastle before the change of CrossCountry franchise in 2007) TransPennine Express routes: Liverpool–Manchester–Newcastle, Manchester–Sheffield–Hull, and Manchester–Edinburgh and Glasgow via the Lake District West Wales–Manchester route