Although the December 2012 timetable has not been formally announced, I have been alerted to the impact that the 115mph running of the Desiro Class 350/1s will have on Birmingham to London timings for LondonMidland services...
From Monday December 10th, the xx.54 departure from Birmingham New Street will connect at Rugby to give an arrival in London Euston 1 hour and 55 minutes later (eg 0854 dep gives a 1049 arrival). This timing includes a 21 minute wait at Rugby for the onward connection (!) and will operate hourly from 0854 to 1854.
Coming back from London Euston, the xx.46 departure will get you into New Street an hour and 56 minutes later (eg 0846 dep gives a 1042 arrival). The change time at Rugby is only 6 minutes but only the hourly services from 0846 to 1446 will give this timing. Incidentally, if you change at Coventry too, using the overtaking Pendolino reduces the journey time to 1 hour 41 minutes!
Talking of Coventry, passengers there are clearly the winners of this change as they will now have an hourly service at certain times of the day with timings (72 minutes) not a great deal worse than the Virgin timings BUT with a significantly lower price tag!
Finally, if you don't want to change at Rugby but do want to experience a Class 350/1 unit running at 110mph, I am told that the xx.33 departures from New Street and the xx.49 departures from Euston have paths which include running at this speed. Looking forward to finding out if the units ride as well at the new top speed as they do currently.
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Hope you get a good ride at that speed,the 450/444 ride very well on the 100 mph parts of swt mainline.
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