Grand Central doubles up on seat availability with extra carriages for festive rail passengers

TRAIN operator Grand Central has doubled the number of carriages available to passengers on some of its most popular pre-Christmas services.

With train companies experiencing high demand from rail users looking to visit loved-ones during the relaxation of COVID tier restrictions, Grand Central will run a number of 10-carriage services along its North East route between Sunderland and Kings Cross.

Grand Central Managing Director, Richard McClean said the move was in response to a ‘clear demand for more socially-distanced seating’ in the week before Christmas.

He added: “People are understandably looking forward to getting home or visiting relatives while the national restrictions are eased over Christmas. We wanted to play our part and help people reunite with loved ones. Relaxing our on-board social  distancing measures was not an option so we decided to double the seating capacity on some of our most popular services by doubling the number of carriages.

“This means we’ve now added an extra 93 seats for reservation within the added capacity. We will be extending our current reservation-only policy to the extra seating in order to ensure social distancing is maintained on board, so please reserve your seat as soon as possible.”

Mr McLean also reminded those planning festive travel that Grand Central would not operate any services between December 25 and January 1, while Kings Cross was closed for major engineering work between December 26 and 30

ENDS

Notes to editors

Grand Central Railway Company Limited is an established train operator which provides direct rail connections from towns and cities in Yorkshire and the North East England with London.

Customer satisfaction levels are consistently high and the rail company was named Britain’s best value rail operator for the tenth time in the Spring 2020 National Rail Passenger Survey. In 2020 the same survey saw Grand Central rated overall best operator for customer satisfaction

Grand Central operates West Riding services between Bradford Interchange, Low Moor, Halifax, Brighouse, Mirfield, Wakefield Kirkgate, Pontefract Monkhill, Doncaster and London King’s Cross. The rail operator also operates North East services between Sunderland, Hartlepool, Eaglescliffe, Northallerton, Thirsk, York and London King’s Cross.

Grand Central is part of the Arriva group. Arriva is one of the leading providers of passenger transport in Europe, employing over 53,000 people and delivering 2 billion passenger journeys a year across 14 European countries. We are part of Deutsche Bahn (DB), one of the world’s leading passenger and logistics companies, and are responsible for DB's regional passenger transport services outside Germany.

Richard Catton  I  PR & Partnerships Executive  I  Grand Central

M: 07866 173 964  |    E: richard.catton@grandcentralrail.com