December 2025 East Coast Timetable

[357]

and which driver is in seat 1A

and a lot more to do with which conductor is pressing the buttons.

Very much agree with this (as someone regularly stuck behind them!)

 

[Railperf]

I had my first full East Coast run from Edinburgh to Kings Cross. Quite impressed with the service.

Was the 15:00 Edinburgh to Kings Cross with a 4 h 14 min timing (working timetable) 4 h 17 min (public timetable) inclusive of stops at Newcastle and York.

Service left Edinburgh 3 mins late and despite that increasing to 5 mins at York.

Still ended up arriving in Kings Cross 4 mins early on the working timetable with a 4 hour 7 minute overall end to end timing and 7 mins early on the public timetable.

Admittedly the booked time from York includes a lot of additional 'padding' to allow for other suburban trains to be routed through Welwyn viaduct.

Fortunately one of them was late (Peterboro to Horsham) and common sense prevailed to let the Edinburgh service stay ahead rather than regulate it at Woolmer Green. But you can see a compromise has been made in the planning to allow a Letchworth to Moorgate stopper to move ahead of the faster trains behind.

I note that we were probably more than 5 mins behind a Grand Central service also running non stop from York, but operated by a Class 180, we soon caught that up well before Welwyn - both trains impeded by the ex Letchworth stopper at Welwyn North which would have been on time.

In France, drivers with that much time to dissipate would probably never have exceeded 100mph after Peterborough or possibly 90mph!

 

[cambsy]

Railperf, I have done two London-Edinburgh returns since the December 2025 time table came in, and have been impressed with the service when it’s working well. Both my London-Edinburgh runs have performed better than Edinburgh-London, with London-York timed in 103.41.9 mins and the other London-York run in similar time, both were checked Welwyn North area for Thameslink etc service, then no more checks to York. The tightest timed section is York-Newcastle 49 mins, which not achieve yet, then made up time Newcastle-Edinburgh. The sections were Kings Cross-York 103.41.9, York-Newcastle 53.10.8, and Newcastle Edinburgh 81.10.3 mins, giving running time of 3hrs 57. 01 mins, and overall approx 4hrs 05 mins.

Both Edinburgh-London runs struggled to keep to time, with the one i timed doing Edinburgh-Newcastle 82.13 mins, Newcastle-York 51.25 mins and York-Kings Cross 115.06 mins. I think the Dec 2025 East Coast timetable is a decent effort with good timetabling, and when service runs well, especially Kings Cross-York, theres chance of a fastest class 800 timing for London to York, though wont beat fastest 91 run, as completely different era.

 

[D1537]

The tightest timed section is York-Newcastle 49 mins, which not achieve yet, then made up time Newcastle-Edinburgh.

The 49 minute York-Newcastle is definitely achievable (I timed it at a few seconds over 50 minutes a couple of months back, and we were checked on the KE bridge), however at the moment the TSR through Northallerton means trains are generally dropping 1-2 minutes there.