Trains between Manchester and major UK city to be reduced for three months

Manchester has strong rail connections to several other cities around the UK, with direct services to Liverpool, Leeds and further afield. Birmingham is another city that has direct links to Manchester, but train operator CrossCountry has announced there will be a reduction in services from later this month until November. 

CrossCountry has announced temporary resource-led reductions to the route will be in place from Saturday August 10 to Saturday November 9. The operator added that they hope this will address performance and reliability issues that have inconvenienced passengers with on-the-day cancellations. 

At present, there are multiple direct services every hour between Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street. The first service of the day departs at 5.11am and the last direct service leaving Manchester at 9.25am. 

An announcement from CrossCountry outlined some of the reasons why the timetable reduction is taking place. 

This reads: “Prolonged industrial action across the rail industry has meant it has not been possible to deal with the backlog of critical training days required by train drivers accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic - when social distancing restricted training taking place.

“Reducing services on some routes over a 13-week period - while bolstering services with extra carriages wherever possible - will retain maximum passenger capacity on the CrossCountry network while working through as much of the necessary driver training as possible.”

Georgia Ehrmann, CrossCountry’s Regional Director for the West Midlands and North West, said: “Removing services from our timetable is always a last resort. I’m sorry for the inconvenience this will cause for our customers and I want to thank them for their patience while these changes are in place.

“This is a difficult decision, but by taking proactive action now we are investing in building a more resilient and dependable service for CrossCountry customers for the future.”