Historical day for the railway

Yesterday (Sunday 14th December) saw the introduction of new railway timetable, heralding a step-change in the frequency and speed of train services. This follows the completion of Network Rail’s West Coast project a week earlier.

The achievement is massive and the result will be a quantum leap in the number of trains and speed of journeys on long distance and commuter routes. Across the whole network, there will be 250,000 more seats every day on almost 700 extra daily train services.

Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s Chief Executive said: “Our completion of the West Coast project acts as the backbone for this massive leap in services and, most importantly for passengers, more seats. From today we're adding the seating capacity to the rail network equivalent to the population of Nottingham, every day."

Network Rail's completion of the £9bn project to upgrade the London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow route (the West Coast main line) is the foundation for this massive surge in new services. Cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool gain 30-50% more services running up to 30% faster to London and dozens of destinations receive more frequent and new local services.

Mr Coucher added: “This is probably the biggest change to the national rail timetable since we moved from the age of steam to that of diesel and electric power and clearly demonstrates how the rail industry can respond to ever increasing passenger numbers as people vote with their feet, moving from car and planes, to trains."

But it is weekend travelers that are a major beneficiary of the new services as the West Coast main line sees an almost doubling of trains at weekends with fast, frequent services on offer throughout the day.

Mr Coucher concluded: "Passengers up and down the West Coast will enjoy much faster, more frequent services with 60,000 extra seats per day available on over 1,000 extra weekly services. There is a major challenge in making such significant changes work straight 'out of the box' , so for the first few weeks we will run 90% of the extra services on the West Coast and gradually build up services in the weeks that follow. Passengers want us to get this right rather than try to deliver everything on day one.”

More trains

The new December timetable on West Coast will bring benefits for a wide range of train and freight operators. The table below shows how there will be more than 1150 extra services on London Midland and Virgin trains alone.

There will be 10 million extra seats on Virgin services alone during 2009. With Virgin trains covering 65,000 miles a day (up from 42,000) that means each Pendolino will cover a million miles by 2012 (in three years).

Faster journeys

The new timetable on West Coast will deliver up to a 30% cut in journey times. Highlights of the new services include:

• Three Virgin trains per hour to Birmingham (two now)
• Three Virgin trains per hour to Manchester (two now) 
• 50% increase in Sunday services, with the number of weekend services closely resembling today's weekday service 
• New London Midland services to Liverpool, London and towns up and down the west coast route 
• Big cut in journey times including:

Click here for more information on work on the West Coast Main Line