Monday 10 Mar 2025
Passengers top tips ahead of Cheltenham Festival
- Region & Route:
- North West & Central
- | North West & Central: Central
Cheltenham Festival-goers travelling by train from Birmingham New Street are being given top tips to help them get off to a winning start for 2025.
With thousands of people travelling by train from Birmingham to the world famous meet this week, railway racegoers are being encouraged to:
- plan their journeys
- check before they travel, and
- allow extra time to catch their train
Paddy Power, top travel tipster and head of stations and passenger experience for Network Rail Central route, said: “I’ve got three top tips to increase your odds of a successful journey to Cheltenham.
“Tip number one – plan ahead and know what train you’re planning to catch. Tip number two – allow more time than usual to get your train as there may be queuing systems in place at busy times. Tip number three – check before you travel at nationalrail.co.uk for the most up-to-date travel information.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming festival goers into the station and hope everyone has a great time at the races.”
Lauren Fleming, CrossCountry’s Events & Resilience Manager, said: “We’re ready to help racegoers get to Cheltenham again this year, but there’s a few things they should remember to stop them falling at the first hurdle: they should check before travelling and leave extra time for journeys, especially on the way home, as services between Birmingham and Cheltenham will be extremely busy and queuing systems will be in place at some stations. We’d also ask those arriving at the Festival by rail to remain respectful to railway colleagues – or risk disqualification!”
Additional staff will be on hand at Birmingham New Street station to help passengers throughout the week from tomorrow (Tuesday 11 March) until Friday 14 March.
The station team has been planning for weeks to get ready for the thousands of extra passengers who use the station to get to Cheltenham Racecourse.
A queuing system may be in use to avoid any jockeying for position, but passengers shouldn’t need to wait for long with up to four services an hour direct to Cheltenham.
Passengers can check their journeys at www.nationalrail.co.uk for the latest travel information.
Contact information
Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41
Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries
Journalists
Network Rail press office - North West & Central Region
0330 854 0100
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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