West Midlands Railway (WMR) is urging passengers to plan their journeys ahead of a major change to its timetable later this month.

From Sunday 21 May, WMR will be make several changes to its services, particularly impacting routes via Birmingham Snow Hill, which include destinations such as Worcester, Kidderminster and Stratford-upon-Avon. The changes are an attempt to improve what has been an unreliable service over recent times.

Changes include:

• Train times on all routes via Birmingham Snow Hill will change, with the aim of creating a more consistent and resilient timetable.
• More trains will run between Small Heath and Tyseley.
• Longer turnaround times will be introduced at Kidderminster in order to improve recovery from delays and reduce the possibility of short-notice cancellations.
• Four Warwickshire stations – Danzey, Wood End, Wootton Wawen and The Lakes – will no longer be classified as ‘request stops’.
• The last weekday train to Hednesford from Birmingham New Street will depart later, at 11.22pm instead of 11pm, in response to customer feedback,

The changes on the Snow Hill Lines have been made in conjunction with Chiltern Railways and both operators are advising passengers to check connections carefully. For more information on the May timetable change, click here.

Jonny Wiseman, WMR customer experience director, said: “In recent years services on our Snow Hill Lines have not been as reliable as we would like and one of the primary reasons for this has been a lack of recovery time built into the timetable.

“The significant changes we are making this month will improve reliability and has been designed to create an evenly-spaced, robust and better-performing timetable for all our passengers.

“These changes have been several years in the making and I urge our customers to check their new timetables carefully to make sure they don’t get left behind.”