Passengers travelling on some weekday GNER services between London King’s Cross and Leeds will have faster journeys from 10 December. Other highlights of the new winter timetable, include one or more additional weekday services for Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster and Northallerton.

Currently weekday GNER trains departing London King’s Cross for Leeds generally leave at five minutes past the hour or 35 minutes past the hour. From the start of the new timetable, GNER London-Leeds services that currently depart at five minutes past the hour will instead leave at 10 minutes past the hour. When combined with other minor timetable adjustments, this means that nine King’s Cross-Leeds trains will be up to seven minutes faster.

The fastest northbound service for the 186-mile journey from King’s Cross to Leeds will be the 09.10, which will take 2 hours 8 minutes. The fastest southbound journeys between Leeds and King’s Cross are the 07.00 and 07.20 from Leeds, which take 2 hours 6 minutes.

Richard McClean, operations director, GNER, said: “Passengers on long-distance journeys have a choice of transport and reducing journey times is one way in which we can stay ahead of the competition.We are hopeful that we can introduce 12 additional services between Leeds and London within the next 12 months to offer more seats for passengers on our biggest long-distance market.”

Other changes to the December 2006 timetable include:
The 11.10 King’s Cross to Leeds service will additionally call at Grantham and Newark but will no longer call at Stevenage.
The 12.30 King’s Cross to Newcastle service will no longer call at Newark and will arrive in Newcastle five minutes earlier than currently.
The 14.00 King’s Cross to Aberdeen, 14.35 King’s Cross to Leeds, 16.00 King’s Cross to Aberdeen and 19.03 King’s Cross to Leeds services will call additionally at Doncaster.
The 14.30 King’s Cross to Newcastle and 1610 King’s Cross to Leeds services will no longer call at Doncaster.
The 16.05 Leeds to King’s Cross service will call additionally at Peterborough.
The 18.10 Newcastle to King’s Cross service will call additionally at Northallerton. The last direct service of the day to Northallerton from Newcastle, Durham and Darlington is currently the 1701 TransPennine Express service from Newcastle.
The 1850 King’s Cross to Leeds service will move to a new permanent departure time of 1903 to accommodate another train operator.

GNER has advised passengers to check the new timetable before travelling. GNER is planning to introduce 12 additional services between Leeds and London (six in each direction) by December next year, in line with its franchise agreement. The additional services would increase the number of trains between the two cities to 65 per weekday, providing a train service every half-hour between London and Leeds in both directions.