Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest

news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward to one or

actually away and having the time of your life. Well, I am having the time of my life here at

beautiful York Station. It is a spectacular building. It's created on a curve.

And so everything is beautifully arched. It's also a place where, well, an awful lot of important

railway lines converge. Just looking across there's an LNER

Azuma service soon setting off for London. Behind me there's a train that's

going all the way to beautiful hull and services from here to Leeds to Scotland

to Scarborough all sorts of great destinations And the reason I'm here is because

the times they are changing for the trains. Yes they are. On Sunday, the normal middle of May

summer time table change takes effect. Now it's not going to be like it was, if you remember

2018. Oh my goodness. Suddenly, Thameslink said we're going completely to revolutionise our timetables.

It was a total disaster. So since then, it's a little more piecemeal.

Part of the great advantage is that some of the services withdrawn during the coronavirus pandemic are being restored.

That's really important.

If you look at Manchester and Birmingham to London, before the pandemic, they had an amazing high-speed service on Avanti west coast trains every 20 minutes they were cut back to just two trains an hour from each and annoyingly they were it was sort of a 20

minute wait then a 40 minute wait which was which is still quite awkward many of the

third trains per hour are being restored

from Manchester to Houston they are not from Birmingham to Houston yet but bear in mind that

Birmingham has very good services on Chiltern to London Mellibone and also London

North Western Railway if like me you don't want to pay of anti West Coast fairs

now what's happening in the Yorkshire area is a subject of great annoyance to the Labour Party

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