Competition to provide more trains between Bradford and London is being stepped up, as Grand Central continues to lobby for paths to provide two extra London trains a day from Bradford Interchange.

State-owned LNER increased its London services at Bradford from two to seven a day in May, when a new Platform 0 was opened at Bradford Forster Square. LNER is also expected to increase the number of Sunday trains on the route from December, according to a report seen by West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Transport Committee last week.

But the outcome of Grand Central’s applications to the Office of Rail and Road is still uncertain, and the report seen by the Transport Committee concedes that ‘it is not yet known whether their application for the relevant network access has been approved’.

In a letter to the ORR dated 26 June, Network Rail had given only qualified support for Grand Central’s proposals, which include new calls at Seaham.

Network Rail said it ‘can now confirm it cannot support any firm calls at Seaham but can support contingent calls at Seaham in 5-car formation only … with an end-date [of] December 2026’.

On 11 July Grand Central responded: ‘The introduction of calls at Seaham would provide significant new journey opportunities, reducing journey times and the requirement tochange trains, as well as making effective use of network capacity.

‘We remain confident that our plans to introduce additional services between London, York and Bradford as well as new stops at Peterborough and Seaham, which would be the town’s first direct connection to London, can be accommodated within the December 2025 timetable.’

Meanwhile Virgin Trains has been challenging an ORR decision not to release unused Avanti West Coast paths between London and Liverpool in its favour, but so far without success.

The ORR refused five open access applications at the start of July on the grounds that capacity is not available on the West Coast Main Line.

These applications had included three from Virgin to run from London to Manchester/Rochdale/Preston, as well as to Birmingham and Liverpool.

The others were proposals from FirstGroup to run to Rochdale, and from Alstom and SLC Rail to restore services between London and Wrexham, using Euston rather than Marylebone.

Several more open access applications are still outstanding, including plans from First to run between London Paddington and Paignton.

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