​ Rail passengers across Coventry and Warwickshire to benefit from new services and faster journey times this May

Tuesday, 12 March 2019

Rail passengers across Coventry and Warwickshire will benefit from new services, quicker journey times, more carriages and enhanced timetables from May.

West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway are introducing new timetables across their networks from 19 May, bringing improvements for passengers across the region. The changes will benefit passengers travelling for both work and leisure – including those using rail services during evenings and weekends.

Services will operate later into the evenings on many routes. Trains between Coventry and Birmingham, will operate between 20 and 45 minutes later than the current timetable.

On weekdays and Saturdays, most trains that currently operate into Birmingham New Street, will continue onto a number of destinations, including Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Walsall, Rugeley, Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe. There will also be more eight car trains operating between Birmingham and London Euston, with quicker journey times to the capital from Rugby, Coventry, Tile Hill, Canley, Berkswell and Marston Green. On Sundays, there will be three services per hour on the West Coast Mainline between Birmingham New Street and London Euston.

For passengers at Rugby and Nuneaton, some trains operating between London and Crewe will be made up of eight carriages rather than the current four. This is due to changes further north, where trains will no longer operate via Stoke-on-Trent on this route. Instead, passengers will be able make connections for onward services at Stafford.

Improved through services between Nuneaton and Leamington Spa, via Coventry, will also be introduced from May. From Monday to Saturday, a two carriage service will operate every hour on the route. On Sundays there will be a new service between Coventry and Leamington Spa, via Kenilworth. This will complement the Sunday Nuneaton – Coventry service, which will continue to run as a separate route for one day a week.

Passengers travelling between Birmingham Snow Hill and Whitlocks End / Dorridge, will benefit from an enhanced evening timetable.Trains will continue to run every half an hour from 1900 until the end of service on weekdays and Saturdays.

Richard Brooks, customer experience director for West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway, said: “The timetable improvements being introduced in May will bring a range of benefits to passengers, with more direct services to destinations across our network and improved capacity on some of our busiest services. The changes we are making this Spring will open up new opportunities for passengers to travel by train for both work and leisure – with additional earlier, later and weekend services operating direct to more destinations.

“However, this isn’t the whole story. We will also have a further timetable change in two years time, where passengers will see further benefits from the introduction of new trains onto the network, which when fully operational, will increase capacity by 25%.”

The new timetable will operate from Sunday 19 May. There will be changes to the time and formation of some services, so passengers are advised to check their train times and to plan ahead for the changes. The new timetable is now live on journey planning systems and can be found at www.westmidlandsrailway.co.uk or www.londonnorthwesternrailway.co.uk

ENDS

*For information on how other parts of the West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway networks will benefit from our new timetable, see the related content associated with this release.

For further information on this release, call our press office on 03300 955150 or email [email protected]

About West Midlands Trains

West Midlands Trains operates both West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway services.

• London Northwestern Railway services operate between Liverpool and Birmingham, and on the West Coast mainline to and from London Euston.

• West Midlands Railway services operate to destinations across the West Midlands via Birmingham New Street.

For more information on these services visit westmidlandsrailway.co.uk or londonnorthwesternrailway.co.uk

The West Midlands Trains franchise started on 10 December 2017 and will run until 2025/26.

West Midlands Trains operates 1,300 services a day, manages 150 stations and provides over 70 million passenger journeys a year. Over the course of the franchise, West Midlands Trains will be investing £1 billion into the rail network to deliver new trains, improved routes and station upgrades. This will include 400 new train carriages across the network and space for an extra 85,000 passengers into Birmingham and London at peak times.

The franchise is a joint venture between Abellio (70.1% share) and East Japan Railway Company / Mitsui & Co., Ltd (29.9% share in a 50:50 split). Abellio is the international passenger transport subsidiary of the Dutch national railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen. In the UK, Abelllio operates ScotRail and Greater Anglia train services, Merseyrail services in a joint venture with Serco and buses through Abellio London. For more information visit www.abellio.com

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