TransPennine Express (TPE) is continuing to focus on improving the reliability of rail services, building on improvements made last December, in their new timetable.
From Sunday 15 December, rail customers in the North of England and Scotland are set to benefit from new services connecting them to new destinations, while performance enhancements have also been built into the new timetable.
Key changes include:
- Brand new direct service between Liverpool and Glasgow, with three service running in each direction every day
- Liverpool to Newcastle services will be extended to Edinburgh, with the majority of services calling at Morpeth
- Manchester Airport to Middlesbrough services will be extended to Redcar Central
- Brand new early morning service from Sheffield to Cleethorpes and new later last service of the day between Cleethorpes and Sheffield
- Majority of South Route services will call at Habrough
- Additional earlier and later services on the Anglo-Scottish route
- New ‘clockface’ departure times for services at Leeds towards Manchester Victoria and Manchester Victoria towards Leeds
The December timetable change has been designed to be transformative for customers across the North of England and Scotland on three new fleets of trains. However, due to a delay in crew training caused by the late delivery of some of our new trains, a maintenance backlog and infrastructure issues – we will be operating a short-term temporary amended timetable for services between Liverpool Lime Street and Edinburgh to help enable the roll out of the new fleets of trains.
Commenting on the forthcoming timetable changes, Leo Goodwin, Managing Director for TransPennine Express, said: “In recent weeks our customers will have noticed that we have had to cancel a number of our services and we are truly sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused.
“To mitigate this, we will be running a temporary amended timetable on our Liverpool to Edinburgh services to ensure that we can have the trains and crew that we need to run our services, alongside providing training on our new Nova fleets of trains.
“However, while this is a temporary 5% decrease in our services, overall we will be providing a 50% increase in capacity for our customers. Alongside this we are pleased to offer greater connectivity for our customers with the launch of new direct services between Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as new journey opportunities to communities across the North with several new destinations, which is good news for all of our customers.”
Customers are advised to plan ahead and check their services online at: https://tpexpress.co.uk/travel-updates/december-2019-timetable-changes