Rail boost brings capital closer

Oldhamers who travel to London by train are about to get the most frequent long distance train timetable in Europe.

With three trains an hour from Manchester to London all day from next week Virgin is to cut its fares to as little as £8 one way to fill the extra 1.5m seats a year.

The dramatic transformation of services comes after more than a decade of work on the £8bn upgrade of the West Coast Main Line which has sometimes wrecked passengers travel plans and forced some to turn to the airlines.

The Rail Regulator ordered Network Rail to finish before Christmas after horrendous problems last year when track work overran after the holiday shut down. Virgin bosses are confident that the line between Manchester and London will be ready before next Sunday, though there will be a week-long shut down over Christmas.

Virgin Rail group chief executive Tony Collins said: “People talk about TGVs and Eurostar. They have had their own lines built for them. We are doing this on a mixed railway.

“When you think that our tilting Pendolinos are sharing the track with local services and freight trains, you realise what an achievement it has been.”

Virgin, which employs more than 3,000 staff, hired dozens of extra train crew a year ago so they would be ready for the big day.

The flagship 7am train from Manchester to London, calling at Stockport will take only an hour and 58 minutes. Others will take shortly over two hours.

Mr Collins said the extra services were being run simply by working the 52-strong fleet of tilting trains harder.

“We have always planned to run this level of service and the trains were built with it in mind. There is some evidence that they respond well to hard work and are extremely reliable.

“When I visited the Longsight depot recently, the trains themselves were sending e-mails to the engineers, telling them what to do. Six or seven years ago, they went out with a lump hammer. Now they go out with a laptop.”

The April campaign will also include a fresh assault on domestic airlines flying between Manchester and London.