Flying Scotsman pledge for rail line

The massive restructuring of train timetables on the East Coast Main Line is aimed at dramatically improving services for passengers as well as allowing the region to compete effectively with the North West to attract more business.

The flagship change will see a new Flying Scotsman-style service introduced within two years to ensure rail travel between London and Edinburgh takes less than four hours.

The original Flying Scotsman main line service began in 1862, with 10am departures from London King's Cross and Edinburgh Waverley which would take 10-and-a-half hours to complete.

The improvements announced yesterday will see journey times to London cut significantly from both York and Leeds, with an average of five additional trains from the North Yorkshire city to the capital on a weekday.

The changes, which are due to come into force in May next year, will mean rail passengers will be able to travel from Leeds to London in just two hours and 10 minutes – 13 minutes less than the current average journey time.

The average journey from York to the capital is due to be cut by nine minutes to one hour and 51 minutes. The number of trains from York to London will increase from 32 to 37 for each weekday.

The new timetable, which has been named Eureka!, has been in development for more than a decade and represents the biggest overhaul of East Coast Main Line services for nearly 20 years.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post yesterday, Lord Adonis said: "The improvements are great news for rail passengers in Yorkshire, and will see train journey times significantly reduced between London and major cities such as Leeds and York.

"The flagship change is to introduce a Flying Scotsman-style service to cut journey times to less than four hours between Edinburgh and London within two years.

"It will also mean that the journey times from Leeds to London will be the same as those from Manchester to London.

"Both Leeds and Manchester are major centres for businesses, and this will allow Leeds to compete more effectively to attract new enterprise."

The route between Edinburgh and London via Yorkshire is now effectively under state control after a public sector company, East Coast, took over from the troubled franchisee National Express in November last year, but it will pass back into private hands in the autumn of 2011.

Companies bidding for the East Coast route will have to promise better stations, improved catering and simpler ticketing as well as faster services.

East Coast's chairwoman, Elaine Holt, said: "Eureka! has been a long time in the making – and represents the biggest change on the East Coast Main Line since electrification in 1991 – and we welcome the fact that we're now closer than ever to this new approach becoming a reality."

Improvements are also due to be made to passenger services on two other rail franchises amid plans to deliver more than 10 per cent extra trains into the capital in the morning peak period.

The Government yesterday laid down requirements for those bidding to run, from next year, the East Coast, Essex Thameside, currently called c2c, and Greater Anglia, currently known as East Anglia, franchises.