North West travel advice issued ahead of busy bank holiday weekend

Monday 24 Aug 2026

North West travel advice issued ahead of busy bank holiday weekend

Region & Route:: North West & Central

Rail passengers in the North West have been urged to plan their journeys in advance ahead of a busy bank holiday weekend across the region.

Creamfields music festival returns to Daresbury in Cheshire on Thursday 27 and runs to Sunday 30 August, while Manchester Pride will take place from Friday 28 until Monday 31 August.

The new Premier League season also continues this weekend, with Anfield hosting Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest on Saturday and Manchester United facing off against Ipswich Town at Old Trafford on Sunday.

Together, these events are expected to draw big crowds into Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street, with tens of thousands of people set to travel from across the country to attend.

Extra staff will be on hand in stations to help but, with bumper crowds expected, Network Rail is advising rail travellers to follow these helpful tips for the smoothest journey possible:

Plan your journey and check before you travel at www.nationalrail.co.uk
Know the times of your last train home - some services are expected to be very busy
Please respect station staff and other passengers when making your journey

Chris Wright, Network Rail's North West route director, said: "It's great to see the North West hosting so many huge events over the bank holiday weekend and we want everyone travelling by train to have the best possible journeys.

"To make your journeys as smooth and easy as possible, I'm urging travellers to following our key travel tips - plan your journey, know the time of your last train home and please respect our station staff. We will have additional staff in place to provide advice and keep people safe throughout the weekend."

To plan journeys in advance and for the latest train times, passengers should check www.nationalrail.co.uk.

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
North West and Central Media Relations
Press Office
Network Rail
NWCmediarelations@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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