Analysis: East Coast Main Line - high demand, not enough space

Philip Haigh looks at the work that has still to be done to accommodate as many trains as possible for the December 2025 timetable

East Coast Main Line: high demand… not enough space

Passengers using long-distance East Coast Main Line services from next December can expect to see poorer performance with fewer trains running on-time.

That’s the output from high-level modelling carried out by Network Rail earlier this year. Major operator LNER can expect an almost 9% fall in punctuality, while for Hull Trains performance could drop nearly 11%.

These predicted falls come as Network Rail tries to squeeze more trains onto a line that it already knows is congested, but which has also seen major investment over the past decade to increase capacity - and for which the Department for Transport now wants a return.

To give some context, NR says that existing operators hold 3,000 access rights to run on the ECML. But that is set to increase by around 1,000 from December.

The line’s problems contributed to the rail industry’s decision to defer implementing the new ECML timetable from December 2024. This deferral prompted more work to shape the timetable, with a task force formed in June 2024 and led by veteran railwayman Rob Brighouse.

This work led the taskforce to recommend implementing the new ECML timetable from December 2025, and so ministers approved it last autumn.

Brighouse told them and NR in a letter last October that the predicted fall in performance was “a trade-off that would need to be accepted in order to deliver the benefits of the investment”.

Other analysis by NR suggests that with the number of trains proposed in the new timetable, the line’s resilience has “started to reach a breaking point”.

Passenger and freight operators submitted detailed bids for ECML train paths from March 2025, and Network Rail has until mid-June to compile and publish its working timetable for the route.

Operators need this timetable so that they can prepare fleet and traincrew diagrams over the summer, and then develop their detailed rosters that inform drivers and conductors what services they will be working from December.

There is already a proposed timetable, published by LNER last December. This is the one worked up by task force members through last year.

However, a letter sent to the Office of Rail and Road by NR East Coast Route Director Paul Rutter on March 14 reveals: “It cannot be assumed that all timetable participants will bid in line with the proposed ECML timetable, nor do any of them have a contractual obligation to do so.”

Several operators have given NR notice that they intended to bid for train paths not included in previous ECML work.

Last January’s task force meeting heard that Hull Trains had submitted an ‘Advance Notification of Timetable Change’ (ANTC) for an extra Hull-London King’s Cross service.

Grand Central wanted several extra services, comprising two Bradford Interchange-London King’s Cross returns, two York-Londons, one London-York, and one London-Wakefield Kirkgate.

Then there’s East Midlands Railway with Project Abraham, which looks to extend Newark Castle services over the ECML’s flat crossing to serve Lincoln.

EMR has asked ORR for rights to run 11 trains per day each way over Newark Flat Crossing. It reckons it has found gaps every hour at xx01-xx09, xx11-xx20, xx33-xx38½, and xx39-xx49, which it says is enough space for two passenger services and one Class 6 (60mph) freight every hour.

In March, Network Rail formally declared three sections of the ECML as congested infrastructure: Huntingdon North Junction-New England North Junction (Peterborough); Longlands Junction (Northallerton)-King Edward Bridge South Junction (Newcastle); and Marshgate Junction (Doncaster)-Copley Hill West Junction (Leeds).

All are twin-track, although Huntingdon-Peterborough has some three-tracking. It’s on the section of route proposed for upgrading to four tracks before the DfT cancelled NR’s Huntingdon-Woodwalton upgrade project back in 2016.

Those three sections remain far from being the ECML’s only pinch-points.

The double-track section over Welwyn’s 40-arch viaduct across the River Mimram has long restricted the number of trains into King’s Cross. British Rail quadrupled the line nearby between New Barnet and Potters Bar in the 1950s, but the tunnels and viaduct at Welwyn proved a tougher challenge to solve.

NR analysed the capacity challenge that Welwyn’s 2½-mile restriction brings to line capacity. It looked at the time that signals would be held at red.

NR explains that sectional running times (the timetable’s building blocks) assume that trains are running under clear signals. If they are running under restricted aspects or held at red signals, then they will take longer. This means they can no longer keep up with the timetable, although planners add recovery time to schedules as mitigation.

For northbound trains through Welwyn, NR calculates a TSAR (time signal at red) of 35-40 seconds when 16 trains run per hour. Running 19tph gives TSAR of 60-65 seconds.

Of more relevance is the fact that the difference between TSAR for perfect days and for typical days sharply increases at around 18tph, which leads NR to conclude that 18tph is the practical performance limit for Welwyn.

December 2025’s timetable pushes 18tph northbound over Welwyn Viaduct for three hours every day (1100-1159, 1200-1259 and 1700-1759), but increases this to 19tph for 1600-1659 and 20tph for 1900-1959, when one freight, one Grand Central, ten Govia Thameslink Railway, one Hull Trains and seven LNER services pass (today’s timetable has 16tph for 1900-1959).

At 18tph, northbound trains cross the viaduct every three minutes in a timetable that has three longer gaps - one each of four, five and six minutes.

York also becomes a critical point for the new timetable. It’s here that TransPennine Express and CrossCountry join or leave the ECML.

TPE services go to or come from Manchester, which has its own congestion challenges, while XC must work with services around Birmingham. To add to the mix, TPE’s Manchester-Scarborough services approach from the west and leave for the east, which means they have to cross the route of north-south services.

York also has half-hourly Harrogate services scuttling in and out of its northern approaches, which have just two tracks.

Network Rail had started work to install a third line north of the station to reduce this bottleneck, but DfT halted funding in advance of the government’s spending review.

For TPE, December 2024’s timetable is already showing poorer performance than June 2024’s, according to NR, as congestion increases on York’s southern approaches.

Squeezing extra trains into the timetable has put services onto minimum dwell times at York, which makes the timetable less resilient to delays caused by the time it takes passengers to board or alight.

Longer dwell times give services a chance to catch their breath before departing, but NR notes that Grand Central’s London-Sunderland trains will have dwell times at York of 2-3 minutes from December 2025, compared with today’s 5-7 minutes.

NR’s modelling of services allows it to adjust timings. For example, to fit two new services from Newcastle (the 1827 LNER to London and 1833 CrossCountry to Birmingham), NR has flexed LNER’s 1700 Edinburgh-London to leave Newcastle at 1824, five minutes earlier than the same train today. It has also moved XC’s 1705 Edinburgh-Bristol to pass Birtley Junction (five miles south of Newcastle) one minute later.

This gives a large enough gap for the two new trains, with NR explaining that extending the Bristol train’s dwell time at Newcastle from four minutes to 7½ minutes is crucial for stabilising punctuality before running into the congested section south of Newcastle.

Yet line and station capacity are not the only NR concerns for ECML performance. It must also consider the power draw of more electric trains running.

Grand Central is the latest operator to plan a switch from diesel, with its recent order of tri-mode units from Hitachi. It will be joining LNER, TPE and Lumo as passenger operators drawing OLE power.

NR has tested various options from individual operators, as well as composite plans that group individual options that progressively increase power draw.

Paul Rutter’s March 2025 letter to ORR reveals that NR cannot confirm when it will commission some parts of its ECML power supply upgrade (PSU) project - particularly the autotransformer feeders between Welwyn and Hitchin.

Nevertheless, he says the ECML power supply is sufficient for the baseline new timetable, but that there might be problems between Reston and Edinburgh if there are unplanned outages from the supply grid.

NR’s ‘Composite 3’ scenario puts the heaviest load on power supplies, pushing up demand at supply points between Doncaster and Marshall Meadows (on the Scottish border) by between 30% and 50%.

This scenario has GC running electric services, Lumo with six trains per day (tpd) running as ten-cars in place of five-cars, TPE running 8tpd Newcastle-Edinburgh as electric throughout, its 1tph Saltburn service as electric York-Northallerton, Hull Trains running on electric, and Northern using three-car Class 323 electric multiple units between Newcastle and Morpeth.

It also has GB Railfreight running 11tpd using Class 99 locomotives drawing electric power on wired sections of line.

GBRf proposes using its incoming fleet of electro-diesel Class 99s on eight routes relevant to the ECML: Doncaster iPort-Mossend, Tilbury Docks-Wakefield, North Blyth-Fort William, London Gateway-Doncaster iPort/Masborough, Whitemoor-Hoo Junction, Tyne Dock-Drax (via Durham Coast and via ECML), and Rylstone-Hull Dairycoates.

Easing NR’s power burden under Composite 3 is Alliance Rail’s withdrawal of its planned 5tpd using nine-car Class 800 bi-mode units, which would have used the ECML between Doncaster and Edinburgh.

This all suggests that government will be fielding further calls for ECML infrastructure investment in coming years.

Even if some parts of the route can cope with further services, other sections cannot. Reliability will need either bottlenecks cleared or tomorrow’s Great British Railways leaders deciding to tailor timetables to the route’s reliable capacity.