If an effort to bring relief from the heatwave, train operator Lumo gave out ice pops in the company colour of blue to passengers boarding the 16:36 service from London Euston to Stirling.

Recent hot weather has seen disruption to services from London Euston, and various train operators have adjusted their timetables, including Chiltern Railways and Great Western Railway.

Heritage railways, including the Llangollen Railway, also had to cancel services due to the heat.

Last month was the warmest June in England since records began, and the second warmest for the United Kingdom as a whole. Temperatures peaked at 37.7°C (99.9°F) in Norfolk on June 26.

Meteorologists predict further heatwaves in July and August, so Lumo may need to stock its freezers with lots more ice pops!

The service from London to Stirling was launched in May, after RailAdvent had joined a test run on the new route. The train travels along the West Coast Main Line, stopping at ten stations between its start and finish, including Milton Keynes Central, Preston and Lockerbie.

As well as its new West Coast service, Lumo also runs passenger trains on the East Coast Main Line between London King’s Cross, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street. It is an open-access train operator owned by First Group, established in 2015, and has its headquarters in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England.

Until the launch of the London to Stirling service, Lumo could boast that all its trains were fully electric. However, the refurbished Lumo Class 222 locomotives that the operator is using on the new service are diesel multiple units, which is seen by some as a retrograde step given that the West Coast Main Line is fully electrified.

Lumo is celebrating awards that it has received recently, including being ranked as the country’s top rail operator for value for money, while also being placed in the top three long-distance UK operators for overall customer satisfaction. These results came in the most recent rail industry customer satisfaction survey results.