Train operator East Midlands Railway (EMR) has announced that it is to partially restore its Intercity timetable following its reduction in July. From Monday 19 October, 96% of the Intercity timetable will run.
The operator, which is run by Transport UK, cut its Intercity services in July due to problems with its new fleet of trains. At the start of September, EMR partially restored the timetable to 92% after some repairs had been undertaken.
The operator has released a short video explaining the issue and announcing the increase in its Intercity timetable.
The trains’ unreliability and safety problems prompted strike action by members of the RMT trade union. The union suspended the strikes earlier this month.
The trains were built by rolling stock manufacturing company Hitachi Rail, which has been working with EMR, the Department for Transport (DfT) and the DfT Operator (DfTO) to improve the reliability of its trains.
This has resulted in some improvement, and EMR is now confident that it can reverse the timetable cut a little more, and restore some of the services that it had cut. The restored services will primarily benefit passengers travelling between Sheffield, Nottingham and London St Pancras.
Full details of the restored services are available from EMR.
We know how important reliable Intercity services are to the communities, businesses and customers we serve. The restoration of these additional services, including more weekday and weekend options for Sheffield and Nottingham, will provide greater choice and flexibility for those travelling to and from London.
While this is a positive step forward, we recognise that there is still more work to do. We remain focused on working closely with Hitachi Rail, the Department for Transport and our other industry partners to address the remaining fleet challenges and restore the full timetable as soon as we can.
I would like to thank our customers and our frontline teams for their continued patience, understanding and hard work as we continue through this recovery.
Neil Grabham, Interim Managing Director at East Midlands Railway
Responses
Another Director in the rail industry speaks. This time the Interim Managing Director at East Midlands Railway. So Mr Director what is your plan to ensure that EMR trains from Sheffield arrive at Leicester on time to connect with the EMR service going from Nottingham to London. And then the same EMR Nottingham / London is then actually on-time at Kettering to connect into 1 of your declassified second hand class 360 units? That is EMR always maintain timetabled connections. Better still recognise that not every passenger from Sheffield or Chesterfield or Derby wants to go to London after the stop at Leicester. Your services do nothing for passengers from intermediate stations between Luton Airport Pathway and Market Harborough for passengers wanting Derby and stations north ..