The long-awaited overhaul of East Coast Main Line schedules will bring additional and faster trains on many routes – but some rail passengers will see fewer and slower services.
Network Rail has revealed what it describes as the biggest timetable change in more than a decade on the line connecting London King's Cross with Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland.
Paul Rutter, the route director for the East Coast at Network Rail, said: “The new December 2025 timetable will unlock thousands more seats, more frequent trains, and quicker journeys.”
The main operator, state-run LNER, will add an extra train each hour between London, York and Newcastle. Trains to and from Tyneside will also be accelerated, with a typical journey time of two hours and 40 minutes – 10 minutes quicker than the current schedule. To Edinburgh, journey times will be cut to four hours and 10 minutes.
David Horne, LNER’s managing director, said: “The new timetable will enable us to serve many destinations more frequently and guarantee thousands of extra seats each day where they are needed most.
“LNER has recruited hundreds of additional colleagues, from drivers to onboard crews and station teams, in readiness for the major change. As an industry, we’ve been preparing for many years, and we continue to work together to deliver the biggest timetable change in more than a decade for our customers and communities.”
“Open-access” rail firm, Lumo, will get an extra train between London and Newcastle each day. In addition, two Lumo trains each weekday will be extended from Edinburgh via Falkirk to Glasgow Queen Street – though in the opposite direction only one will carry passengers from Scotland’s largest city.
The Lumo services will restore the direct Glasgow-Newcastle link lost last December when LNER withdrew trains on the route.
Median journey times from London King's Cross are mostly reduced by several minutes:
- Leeds – three minutes
- York – two minutes
- Durham – eight minutes
- Edinburgh – eight minutes
But trips to Hull will typically be 11 minutes slower and median journey times to Cambridge rise by one third – from 51 to 68 minutes.
Two stations in Northumberland, Morpeth and Berwick-upon-Tweed, will get two and four fewer trains a day respectively from London King's Cross.
In addition, changes to stopping patterns mean that some journeys which were previously direct, such as Durham to Newark and Leeds to Aberdeen, will now require changes at York.
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