THE countdown has started to faster and more frequent services as Virgin Trains takes advantage of the modernised West Coast main line in its Virgin High Frequency timetable starting 14 December.

Three trains an hour will give a ‘turn up and go’ frequency between London Euston and Birmingham/Manchester, with significantly higher average speeds of 80 and 86.25 mph respectively.

Fastest journey times from Birmingham to Euston are slashed from one hour 21 minutes to one hour 11 minutes, and from Manchester from two hours five minutes to just over two hours.

Two additional trains will supplement the hourly service from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street, with three extra in the London direction, at an average speed of 90mph. Thirteen daily trains each way will link Euston and Glasgow.

A new direct weekday service will run between Euston and Wrexham General via Crewe and Chester, while on the North Wales Coast, Holyhead to Chester and Euston trains will be five and 10-car Super Voyagers – signalling an end to loco haulage of Pendolinos from Crewe.

The VHF timetable is in fact a ‘lighter’ timetable, put in place for six weeks to make sure new Network Rail track and signalling has bedded down.

London Midland’s new timetable will see introduction of its £190 million-plus fleet of 37 four-car Class 350/2 Desiro emus, the first 10 of which are ready for service, with the remaining 27 by next July.

Existing trains have benefited from a £5 million refurbishment investment, which is nearing completion.

London Midland will for the first time be running direct services between Euston and Birmingham and new direct services connecting stations along the Trent Valley and in Staffordshire and the North West with London.

Frequency will be doubled between Birmingham and Liverpool, new services will run to Gloucester and Worcester, and the West Midlands will benefit from extra trains during evenings and weekends.

Also, longer trains will run at peak periods on the busiest routes.

Meanwhile, further north, Northern’s new West Coast timetable has altered timings for 1,300 daily services to almost 300 stations in order to dovetail them on to the intensively used route.