Chiltern Railways To Add More Services From Christmas Day Following New Public Ownership

The railway service, which runs services between London Marylebone, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and the West Midlands, will be the sixth train operator whose services have been nationalised by the Government.

From December, 25 additional daily Chiltern Railways services will be introduced – providing 10,000 extra seats each weekday to tackle “overcrowding”, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

This includes half hourly services during weekdays on the Chiltern main line between London and Birmingham, as well as more services at the weekends.

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Rail minister Lord Hendy said: “Every transfer into public ownership gives us the chance to tackle the bread-and-butter issues people care about – more frequent, comfortable trains that turn up on time.

“As we set up Great British Railways (GBR), we’re putting passengers first.

GBR is a new public sector body which will bring responsibility for tracks and rains back under a single organisation. It is the first public body of its kind since the railways were privatised in the mid-1990s.

Legislation to create GBR was included in the recent King’s Speech.

“It will not happen overnight,” said Lord Hendy. “But we will build a railway the country can trust and rely on and that will create growth, jobs and homes.”

The UK’s largest train operator Govia Thameslink Railway as well as c2c, Greater Anglia, South Western Railway and West Midlands Trains have previously been brought into public ownership by the Government.

LNER, Northern, Southeastern and TransPennine Express were already nationalised when Labour came to power.