London North Eastern Railway (LNER) is enhancing Sunday services between Yorkshire and London by adding three extra services and extra carriages to trains to cope with an increased demand from leisure travellers.

Sundays are now one of the company’s most popular days for travel, and there are now 30 per cent more customers travelling across the company’s network than in 2019.

With this increase in demand, two additional services will run between Leeds and London King’s Cross and one between Doncaster and London, whilst thousands more seats will be provided by adding extra carriages to eight existing Sunday services.

The current five-carriage services to destinations including Leeds, Harrogate, and Lincoln will be replaced with either nine or ten carriage Azuma trains.

The new services and longer trains will start in December 2023, but tickets for the extra services are now on sale, with bookings open for many journeys up to and including 26 January 2024. To obtain the best value fares, customers are advised to book directly on the LNER App or at lner.co.uk

Harrogate will continue to be served by direct London North Eastern Railway, but two of these will be Azuma trains with ten carriages, the 09:05 and 17:05 from London King’s Cross to Harrogate. However, they will not be able to call at Horsforth due to the platform length, although customers can connect using regular Northern train services, or travel by one of the other four direct Harrogate services that will still continue to call at Horsforth.

Other changes to be introduced in December include:

Additional Sunday services between West Yorkshire and London King’s Cross:

Northbound:

• 14:33 London King’s Cross to Leeds, calling at Peterborough, Newark Northgate, Doncaster, and Wakefield;

Southbound:

• 08:30 Doncaster to London King’s Cross, calling at Retford, Newark Northgate, Grantham, Peterborough
• 11:40 Leeds to London King’s Cross, calling at Wakefield, Doncaster, and Peterborough
• The 08:05 on Sundays from Leeds to London King’s Cross will no longer call at Retford, Newark Northgate, and Grantham resulting in a 19-minute shorter journey time with an arrival at London King’s Cross at 10.18.

Services with extra carriages

• 13:15 Harrogate to London King’s Cross and 19.03 London King’s Cross to Leeds will be a ten-carriage Azuma services.

Services lengthened from five to nine Azuma carriages:

• 08:05 Leeds to London King’s Cross
• 11:03 London King’s Cross to Harrogate
• 15:36 Harrogate to London King’s Cross
• 19:06 London King’s Cross to Lincoln

David Horne, Managing Director at LNER, said: “This is fantastic news for our customers. The data shows more customers are travelling with LNER at weekends, with Sundays proving especially popular.

“Our plans will provide more than 3000 extra seats from December, while also improving the connectivity for many of our destinations between London and West Yorkshire on Sundays.

“Customers travelling from Wakefield, Doncaster and Peterborough will benefit from the additions to the timetable from December 2023, with further plans to introduce even more seats next year.”

Rail Minister, Huw Merriman, said: “This is a real win for passengers and will encourage even more people onto our railways by offering more frequent and comfortable journeys.

“We know travel patterns have changed since the pandemic and we’ve seen leisure travel boom over the weekends. That’s why the Government did what we could to help facilitate these extra services and I’m delighted to see LNER taking this responsive approach.”