Building on from the East Midlands Railway’s (EMR) recent announcement on increasing cross-Midlands services from mid-December, East Midlands Railway have announced faster Sunday services linking cities in the East Midlands to London.

12 Sunday services will see journey times cut by as much as 28 minutes on some journeys, with some future trains departing or arriving at stations earlier or later than they currently do.

Improved Sunday Morning Services from London St Pancras 

The faster journey times are due to the partnership between EMR and Network Rail, the latter of which has undertaken several upgrade programmes on the southern half of the Midland Mainline over the last few years.

With the new Aurora trains entering service on EMR services next year, these faster amended Sunday services will offer regular passengers a taste of what’s coming in terms of quicker journey’s when the new trains take to the rails.

With that said, work on the southern end of the Midland Mainline is ongoing, and as such the 07:00 Derby to London St Pancras and the 07:24 Nottingham to London St Pancras will no longer run.

This is to give Network Rail additional maintenance time to undertake any engineering works on the line where needed in the future.

Improved Sunday Morning Services to London St Pancras 

These timetable changes will come into affect on the morning of Sunday 15th December 2024.

“This is great news for customers who use our Intercity services on Sundays.

In addition to speeding up 12 journeys, which will encourage more people to travel by rail, the changes will also enable critical track maintenance work and deliver annual savings to the taxpayer—balancing the need for long-term infrastructure improvements with passenger experience.”

Will Rogers, Managing Director at East Midlands Railway