Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, first full working week of 2026.

It's Monday the 5th of January. If you go down to Preston Station today, you might be tempted to board a train to Carlisle on the West Coast mainline.

But if you get on board, you'll find that you actually

head south initially rather than north. That's because from today there is a new shuttle train

running between Preston and Carlisle, which is almost on the Scottish border, the idea is that this is going to

provide an alternative for passengers because the West Coast mainline is completely closed for the

next 10 days. They're replacing the so-called Clifton Bridge, nothing to do with the suspension bridge in Bristol.

It's over the M6 between Schap and Penrith.

And in order to do that, well, they need to close both the motorway, which they did this weekend,

and they will do next weekend, and the line.

They would normally just run rail replacement buses,

but I am glad to say instead of that,

Network Rail and Avanti West Coast have decided,

no, we want to do better than that.

We are going to help passengers by putting on these trains,

their special bi-mode trains, so they don't need

the electric power they can manage on diesel, which is just as well, because the line goes off

through Clitherow, up the Ribble Valley to Ribblehead Viaduct, which you may already know,

is on the Settle to Carlisle Railway line.

The most beautiful line, I think it's fair to say, in England.

I caught up with Andy Mellas, who's the managing director of Avanti West Coast.

Well, today's all about the demonstration of one of our Eververeaux trains running over the Settling Carlisle line in advance of 14 days of engineering work that's taking place in the first half of January, which is going to require us to look at diverting trains because there won't be direct journeys between London and Glasgow

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