'Flying Scotsman'proves elusive

摘要

East Coast insiders report that the aspiration of former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis to introduce a pair of London - Edinburgh business trains with a 4 h timing is proving difficult to achieve. The best timing is currently 4 h 2 min and East Coast is 'putting a lot of energy' into working with Network Rail to get down to the 4 h target. With only one stop at Newcastle and aimed primarily at travellers from Scotland, the 'Flying Scotsman' would provisionally leave Edinburgh at 05.40 and return from King's Cross at 18.20. Fitting such a high-profile train with a non-standard stopping pattern into the clockface Eureka! ECML timetable will also raise issues of service reliability. East Coast currently runs 135 trains a day. This means that if one train arrives more than 10 min late, the PPM for the day drops by 0.8%.