Avanti West Coast is increasing its services as the first stage in a recovery plan to step up the timetable on its network.

The intercity operator will be adding around 70 extra services a week on its busiest route between London and Manchester, compared with the current timetable. Introducing these additional services will provide around 40,000 extra seats a week on the West Coast Main Line. There will also be additional services on the London – Birmingham route.

There will then be a further increase of the timetable in December which will see three trains an hour on the London – Manchester route, an additional service to the West Midlands taking services to / from Birmingham to at least half-hourly, and the return of direct services to North Wales.

From next week until early December, up to ten extra trains a day, over and above the existing timetable, will run between Manchester and London on both weekdays and weekends. These services will begin to be introduced on Tuesday 27 September, from when Avanti West Coast will run an additional ten trains on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays and six additional trains on Wednesdays.

Following this, in mid-December, Avanti West Coast will continue its recovery with a significant step up of the timetable. Further additional services will be added to Manchester, Birmingham and North Wales as well as maintaining regular services to Liverpool and Scotland. Overall, there will be more than 260 services a day on weekdays, compared with around 180 a day before December and 245 in May 2022.

www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk