BBC staff get new London-Manchester train service

A new rail service between Rochdale and London is being introduced to the benefit of BBC staff working at its northern outpost.

Plans for a route terminating in Rochdale, nestled in the Pennine Hills 10 miles north of Manchester, will aid those travelling to the BBC’s Media City office in Salford.

Rochdale, a former mill town of 110,000 people, last had its own rail connection to the capital a quarter of a century ago.

Passengers from the area will benefit from a new three-hour service along the West Coast Main Line to London Euston, travelling at speeds of up to 125mph.

FirstGroup, which is behind the proposal, said the service will support around 1.6 million people in the region.

Operations are planned from 2027 under FirstGroup’s Lumo brand, requiring a fleet of around half a dozen new trains.

Japan’s Hitachi is expected to be best-placed to secure the procurement contract, having supplied Lumo’s existing five-train fleet from its plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

The trains will operate under overhead wires as far as Manchester and be equipped with batteries to complete the last few miles on the unelectrified line to Rochdale.

At the heart of the plan is the restoration of direct London trains to Manchester Victoria station, once one of Britain’s major rail hubs but in recent years reduced to providing mostly local trains and semi-fast services to other northern cities.

The service will also stop at Eccles, which FirstGroup said will serve nearby Salford and provide Media City employees with a convenient route to London.

This will mean they do not have to travel to Piccadilly Station, Manchester’s hub for trains to the capital.

MediaCity hosts 3,200 employees and is home to BBC Sport, BBC Breakfast, Radio 5 Live and the BBC Philharmonic, as well as children’s and religious programming and local TV and radio.

The trains, which will offer wi-fi and at-seat catering, will make two more stops before heading to Euston, and are set to make six return journeys a day,

Lumo, launched in 2021, already operates a service between London and Edinburgh, which it is looking to extend to Glasgow, while sister brand Hull Trains has been operating between London and the Yorkshire city since 2000.

The company has applied to run the new Rochdale service under open access rules that allow for the launch of new routes not catered to by existing franchises where demand is sufficient.

Other open access operators include Arriva UK’s Grand Central, which provides services to Sunderland and Bradford from King’s Cross, though several more have fallen by the wayside after proving unviable, including a service from London Marylebone to Wrexham.

Labour’s plan to renationalise the railways by taking franchises under state ownership as they expire shouldn’t impact the plan, according to FirstGroup, which cited a commitment to retain the open access model in the recent Getting Britain Moving strategy.

FirstGroup already runs Manchester’s existing express service to London through its Avanti West Coast business.