Northern is reminding customers across the country – including Yorkshire – that its new timetable will be enforced this weekend and is urging them to ‘Check My Timetable’.
While the overwhelming majority of services will stay as they are, the train operator is encouraging people that make regular trips on the same trains to use the Check My Timetable tab on the website to check for updates related to their local station.
The new timetable will come into effect on Sunday, May 21, 2023 and will impact customers in the North West, to provide additional capacity through the Calder Valley during the on-going TransPennine Route Upgrade engineering work. Northern will introduce a new hourly service between Leeds and Chester via Manchester Victoria on Sundays.
The ‘Dales Rail’ service from Blackpool North to Carlisle will not operate this summer, but Northern is working with stakeholders on proposals to reintroduce the service next year.
In the North East, once completion of a new platform infrastructure at Hartlepool station is done, Northern will introduce an additional service between Middlesbrough and Newcastle.
In Yorkshire, Northern will operate a new weekday return service between Sheffield and Cleethorpes. The services from Ilkley and Skipton to Bradford Forster Square will continue to run twice an hour during the peak times, but will reduce to one train per hour during the off-peak to reflect lower customer demand.
Although Northern’s Sheffield to Gainsborough Lea Road service remains the same, there will no longer be mid-week services from Sheffield to Gainsborough Central during peak times.
Chief operating officer at Northern, Tricia Williams, said: “The new timetable coming into effect on Sunday is part of a national timetable change process that takes places twice a year for all train operators in England.
“The train network is a complex system of inter-dependent parts and it is vital that changes are co-ordinated in this way.
“For the vast majority of our customers there is no change, but some will notice a slight re-timing of service – as such, I would advise all customers to use the Check My Timetable feature on our website for any travel plans after 21 May.
“There are a very small number of services that have been removed from the timetable which reflects customer demand and we have already communicated that information to those communities.”