The enhanced cross-London service leads our roundup of alterations to schedules this May, as PHILIP SHERRATT reports
The national timetable change taking effect on 20 May will be the biggest in living memory, according to the Rail Delivery Group, with almost four million services rescheduled across the country. As has been widely reported, this has caused some administrative difficulties with agreeing timetables behind the scenes. As usual, our preview of the changes looks ahead to the key alterations while endeavouring to cover a broad scope of changes across the country.
THAMESLINK RAMPS UP
The headline alteration this time must be the ramping up of Thameslink services. This is the first of four stages as Govia Thameslink Railway moves towards the 24 trains per hour (tph) peak service through the core section through London between Blackfriars and St Pancras. The original plan envisaged 20tph coming on stream in May, but as we reported last autumn (p10, December issue), this has now been re-phased and 18tph will run initially.
The key changes in May are the addition of regular services from the East Coast main line into the Thameslink core via the Canal Tunnels (although six ‘preview’ services per da…
