The Government has given the green light to a crucial upgrade of one of the UK’s busiest railway lines.

There will be a new timetable for the East Coast Main Line (ECML) in December 2025, which will provide more trains, more seats and quicker journeys, officials say.

It will also include growing capacity, with more than 16,000 additional seats on LNER services per day, as well as around six million seats per year between Newcastle, York and London.

Bosses say there will also be better connectivity with faster services between London, the east of England, Yorkshire, the north-east and Scotland.

Further, the project will ensure “better local services in many regions”.

The upgrade is the result of £4billion of investment on the ECML over the past 10 years, including the East Coast upgrade.

Officials say that this will:

• Enable passengers and communities to receive the benefit of significant investment including the East Coast Upgrade and a new fleet of Azuma trains
• Improve connectivity between Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland with London, including reductions in journey times to long distance services
• Allow all Thameslink and Great Northern services to call at the new Cambridge South station
• Enable additional Northern services between Sheffield and Leeds, and between Middlesbrough and Newcastle
• Increase TransPennine Express services between Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley to eight trains per day in each direction
• Enable greater opportunities to further improve capacity in the future; with more work needed to increase capacity for freight customers

LNER services terminate and travel from the station in London made world famous by the Harry Potter books and films – Kings Cross.

David Horne, Managing Director of LNER, speaking on behalf of the rail industry, said: “We’re delighted the new transformative timetable for December 2025 has been approved.

“It reflects a decade of significant investment to improve the ECML and will provide more trains, thousands more seats and quicker journeys. It will also set us on the right path to provide further journey improvements in the future.

“Train companies and Network Rail have worked together to create the new timetable and we encourage passengers to check our December 2025 timetable microsite to see what it means for them.

“Our focus as an industry, and with our stakeholders, is now on getting everything ready over the next 12 months to launch the new timetable so we can provide the best service possible for the passengers and communities we serve.”