500,000 extra seats on trains for Olympics
More than 500,000 extra seats will be made available on trains to and from the West Midlands during the Olympic Games. Passengers are being warned of timetable changes as rail companies put on special later services to bring people back from London each night.
More than 500,000 extra seats will be made available on trains to and from the West Midlands during the Olympic Games. Passengers are being warned of timetable changes as rail companies put on special later services to bring people back from London each night.
Virgin Trains is starting two late night services from Friday, bringing people back to Wolverhampton for 10 past midnight and 1.10am. They will run until the closing ceremony of the Games.
The company, which runs services to London from Stafford, Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Dudley and Birmingham New Street, is putting on 199,800 extra seats during the games.
Additional services will run on Sundays as well. An 8am and 9am service will go from Wolverhampton this Sunday, July 29 and on August 5.
There will also be a 7.05am service both days and on August 12.
London Midland has 230,000 extra seats in and out of London Euston.
Chiltern Railways is warning of “significant” timetable alterations on August 1, 6 and 7 and said services on July 27, 28, 29 and August 12 were likely to be busier than usual
People travelling to the Games have been advised to travel off-peak wherever possible.
Chiltern Railways is providing approximately 120,000 seats over the Games, increasing the number of carriages on off-peak services and running late night trains out of London every day. There will also be early morning and late night trains on Sundays.
Further travel information for Games events is available at www.getaheadofthegames.co.uk
By Daniel Wainwright
Comments for: "500,000 extra seats on trains for Olympics"
PJW Holland
so there goes the capacity case for HS2. If they can do it during the Olympics.......
Martin
My thoughts exactly!
Didn't someone once tell us that capacity couldn't be increased?
Go-HS2
Yes, this is great news but has nothing to do with HS2.
These are late night trains and have no relevance to normal operations and peak-time hours when we need to relieve crowded services.
So this is, in fact, opponents of HS2 admitting extra capacity can only be delivered outside normal operating hours!
Belle711
It's articles like this that make me less worried about our upcoming trip. The articles about the train hassles had me worried for a bit, but after reading this I feel better.
We're flying into Paris and taking the Eurostar to Ebbsfleet International (it's an international train station so we were assured that all trains to and from Europe stop there) and then we'll take the Javelin to the Games in Stratford. When the Games are over, we'll just hop on the Eurostar from Ebbssfleet and fly back out from Paris.
All of this hype about the "travel chaos" really seems silly. It almost reminds me of when a person is overly modest in order to receive praise. London never disappoints visitors, and I'm sure that it will be the same this time around and that the Olympics' host city will do a wonderful job.
Thanks for a great article!
James Savage
Quite right, HS2 is dead in the water, environmentally, financially, politically, and as we can see from the capacity viewpoint, the sooner Justine Greening drops it the better - for the country and for every tax payer - and the time could not be more ripe than now for a burying of some really good "bad" news amid the hype of the Olympics.