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Thursday 4 Sep 2025

More trains, more seats and quicker journeys as rail industry announces December 2025 timetable

Region & Route:

National

The rail industry has announced the biggest timetable change on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) in more than a decade, which will provide more trains, thousands of extra seats per day and quicker journeys, as part of a wider set of timetable changes across the network this December. 

Launching on Sunday 14 December 2025, the new timetable is the result of £4billion invested on the ECML over the past decade, including the East Coast Upgrade, and will:

• Improve connectivity between Yorkshire, the North East, Scotland and London, including reductions in journey times to long distance services;
• Bring additional LNER services on Sundays between Bradford Forster Square and London King’s Cross;
• Enable all passing services which are operated by Greater Anglia, Great Northern, Thameslink, and CrossCountry, to call at the new Cambridge South station when it opens in early 2026;
• Enable a new hourly fast service with Northern between Leeds and Sheffield, and additional services between Middlesbrough and Newcastle;
• Increase TransPennine Express services between Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley to eight trains per day in each direction Monday-Saturday and 7 trains in each location on Sunday;
• Deliver more frequent East Midlands Railway services between Nottingham and Lincoln, doubling from one train per hour to two trains per hour Monday to Saturday, providing over 2,000 extra weekday seats and 2,500 extra Saturday seats;  

Crucially, the new timetable will include growing capacity with more than 60,000 extra seats across the route each week, and better connectivity, including faster services from London to Edinburgh (just over four hours) and London to Leeds (just over two hours).

The new timetable follows close collaboration between Network Rail, ECML passenger and freight train operators, and other rail industry partners. Whilst the vast majority of services will commence in December 2025, to enable a smooth introduction a small number of services will be introduced in a phased way in 2026.

Ellie Burrows, Eastern regional managing director, Network Rail, said: “The new timetable will unlock thousands more seats, more frequent trains, and quicker journeys along the East Coast Main Line. Our priority now as an industry is to reliably deliver this transformative timetable in December, setting us on the right path to provide further journey improvements in the future for the passengers and communities we serve.”

Rail Minister Lord Peter Hendy said: “Through more seats, more trains and faster journeys, this new timetable will see the biggest increase to intercity services along the route in a decade and will unlock growth along the whole of the East Coast Main Line.

“Growing capacity and improving passenger experience will encourage more people to choose rail, boosting the economy and delivering on the Government’s Plan for Change.”

In addition to the ECML, the December 2025 timetable will see enhancements on other parts on the network too, including:

• Running more Avanti West Coast services from Euston, including more trains between London and Liverpool;
• More independent services from Grand Central, Hull Trains and Lumo, including provision for a new Stirling to London Euston service; 
• Transport for Wales will introduce two trains an hour between Chester and Wrexham, Monday to Saturday, along with a new timetable on the Heart of Wales line between Swansea and Shrewsbury, lifting the through service to five trains each day, and finally the first ever Transport for Wales Sunday service to Coryton.

Jacqueline Starr, Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Rail Delivery Group said: "We’re pleased to support the introduction of this major update to this year's December timetable and we continue to work closely with industry partners on its implementation. Customers can look forward to more trains and quicker journeys, boosted by the biggest change in more than a decade to East Coast Main Line services.

"In the long-term, this timetable will bring more services, and a more resilient railway that meets the needs of today’s customers.”

The full list of December timetable changes will be published on the journey planner tool on the National Rail website from late September. Meanwhile, passengers can find out what the ECML timetable means for their local area by using the dedicated ECML microsite https://ecmltimetable.info.