Fourteen Chester-London trains a day from January 26

Dec 17 2008 by Barry Ellams, Chester Chronicle

CHESTER is to benefit from major rail network improvements.

The last piece of work on Network Rail’s £9bn upgrade of the London-Scotland West Coast main line was completed, heralding a step-change in the frequency and speed of train services.

Chester will get a staged increase in services from just six direct trains to London to 14 every weekday from January 26, with journey times reduced to two hours.

As a result of other timetable changes, Chester will benefit from:

BLOB Half-hourly services to Llandudno Junction

BLOB Hourly Holyhead – Chester – Wrexham – Shrewsbury services

BLOB Half-hourly Chester – Crewe services

Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive, said: “The infrastructure is now ready for the introduction of new, faster, more frequent services across the route.”

He added: “This has been an extraordinarily complex project to rebuild Europe’s busiest mixed-use railway. Now it is complete passengers and freight operators will reap the benefits.

“When Network Rail took over this critical project it was a mess. Railtrack left the scheme billions of pounds over budget and undeliverable. Five years down the line, learning the lessons from New Year, Network Rail has re-written the rule book on project delivery, successfully hitting over a dozen key milestones in 2008.”

The Mid-Cheshire Rail Users Association has welcomed improvements to services on the Mid Cheshire line which runs from Chester through Northwich and Knutsford to Manchester.

To coincide with Virgin Trains improved services to London, Northern has introduced more trains from Chester on weekdays and a more frequent service on Sundays.

John Oates, chairman of MCRUA, ‘We are very pleased that there is now an hourly service all day during the week and a two hourly service on Sundays. MCRUA is championing the line through its new website – we want to encourage more people to use it, particularly from Chester.”

Improvements include:

BLOB Changes to all 13 major junctions on the route, including a significant bottleneck at Rugby, enabling trains to travel at up to 125mph

BLOB Laying more than 36 kilometres of new track through the Trent Valley, meaning that four tracks now run nearly all the way from London to Crewe

BLOB 174 new or altered bridges

BLOB 53 new or extended platforms at places like Milton Keynes and Manchester Airport

BLOB More than three million yards of rail, ballast and sleepers have been laid