Avanti West Coast sets out plans for restoring Manchester to London rail timetable

Avanti West Coast has announced the start of the restoration of a full rail timetable on its Manchester to London route.

The train company, which cut services to a maximum of one train every hour on its routes out of London Euston this summer due to staff shortages, will add 70 additional trains each week on its busiest route between Manchester and Stockport and the capital. The part-restoration of services will see an extra 40,000 seats available for passengers.

Avanti has also set out its plans for fully restoring the timetable to normal levels. From 27th September, ten extra trains will run per day between Manchester and London Euston on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, with six additional services on Wednesdays. Further additional services will then be added from mid-December.

This week will also see regular direct services between London and North Wales restored, along with additional trains put on between Euston and Birmingham. From December, the rail company will increase services to Scotland and Liverpool with a view to run a total 260 daily trains across its network, up from 245 in May prior to timetable cuts.

Barry Milsom, Executive Director of Operations and Safety for Avanti West Coast, said:

“We know we’re not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and we apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience this is causing.

“The decision to reduce our timetable in August was not taken lightly but our customers and communities deserve a dependable train service, so we’ve been working hard to rebuild our timetable in a resilient and sustainable way.

“Resolving this situation required a robust plan that allows us to gradually increase services without being reliant on traincrew overtime. We are now in a position to start delivering this incremental increase in services, followed by a further increase in December. We’ll continue to review our timetable beyond December with our industry partners.

“We’re working with our people, their union representatives, and industry partners to match the resources we have to demand, so we can deliver reliable services across our network to all our customers and communities.

“We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding during this period.”