With more passengers travelling between the Cotswold Line, Oxford and London at weekends, GWR will run longer trains on several Sunday services once timetables change next Sunday, December 10.
Nine-coach InterCity Express Trains (IET) will be used on four more services from London Paddington to Great Malvern and three in the opposite direction, replacing the five-coach IETs used until now.
The change means that a majority of services on the Cotswold Line on Sundays will be operated by nine-coach trains, which have 650 seats, compared with 326 seats in a five-coach train.
The CLPG will continue to press GWR management to replace five-coach IETs with nine-coach sets on more weekday and Saturday services, to help ease overcrowding between London, Oxford and stations at the eastern end of the Cotswold Line.
There are no major changes next weekend to GWR’s Cotswold Line and Worcester-Gloucester-Bristol timetables, nor to the timetables on connecting routes operated by CrossCountry Trains and West Midlands Railway.
- The photograph shows GWR’s first nine-coach IET to carry passengers, 800304, departing from Moreton-in-Marsh working the 17.25 from Worcester Foregate Street to London Paddington on Wednesday, June 13, 2018, only its second journey in passenger traffic after working the 14.21 from Paddington to Worcester earlier in the afternoon. Picture: William Crossley