Merseyraill came out as a winner at this year’s Grand National Festival as it coped with over 103,000 journeys by racegoers travelling to and from Aintree.

As well as putting on a 7½-minute service, Merseyrail gave away 5,000 pairs of famous flip flops and kept racegoers at Moorfields, Liverpool Central, and Aintree stations entertained with live music.

Extra staff at main stations and across the network ensured train services ran reliably and punctually.

Woodlands Hospice, Centre 56, and Blackburne House charities held collections at Merseyrail stations to raise funds for their good causes.

To ensure services ran smoothly, Merseyrail worked closely with the British Transport Police, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Stadler, Carlisle Security, Network Rail, and The Jockey Club.

Comments from racegoers

I was at Central station on Friday morning taking my grandson to Southport, the atmosphere at the station was brilliant, well done Merseyrail, so well organised.

Jacqui Parkinson

Very well organised, trains reliable, plenty of friendly, helpful staff and great entertainment. Such a great advert for the city with so many people having a positive experience visiting the area. The welcome passengers get on race days means Merseyrail is very much part of the Grand National experience.

Martinn Grice

It’s always an honour to work with Aintree Racecourse and The Jockey Club to support the Grand National Festival. We’re really proud of the fantastic customer service we have delivered for the 2024 Grand National Festival.

It’s a massive challenge for Merseyrail, but one that our staff rise to every year. Their expertise and professionalism ensured racegoers benefitted from our first-class transport network.

There is a huge amount of preparation work that goes into providing our special service to The Grand National Festival each year. We work incredibly closely with colleagues at Network Rail, British Transport Police, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Stadler, Carlisle Security and The Jockey Club to ensure the best travel experience we can for racegoers.

Merseyrail provides much more than a train service across the three days. Our customers love the atmosphere that we help to create with entertainment, music and charity activity at our stations. It’s a unique experience that for many is an integral part of attending the races.

This is a collaborative effort, with many skilled workers coming together to help deliver one of the greatest sporting occasions in the world. Everyone at Merseyrail loves this event, and it was great to see so many managers and head office staff volunteer to support our fantastic stations teams, helping to ensure everyone had a great experience.

We have received some lovely feedback from visitors to the region who were really impressed with Merseyrail. You can rest assured that we will be ready to support the Grand National Festival in 2025.”

Neil Grabham, Merseyrail Managing Director

I hope our passengers had a fantastic time at the Grand National. It was a pleasure to work with Merseyrail to make sure everyone could travel safely to Aintree.

Our maintenance team in Liverpool carried out special drone inspections along the route to make sure we could provide a reliable service in advance of the Grand National festival. We also had extra response teams ready to go to address any issues as soon as possible. I’m pleased to say that passengers were kept safely on the move to and from Aintree throughout the three days.

Phil James, Network Rail’s North West route director