Grand Central puts on extra carriages for festive rail passengers

With train companies experiencing high demand from rail users looking to visit loved-ones during the relaxation of COVID tier restrictions, Grand Central will run a number of 10-carriage services along its North East route between Sunderland and Kings Cross.

Grand Central Managing Director, Richard McClean said the move was in response to a ‘clear demand for more socially-distanced seating’ in the week before Christmas.

He added: “People are understandably looking forward to getting home or visiting relatives while the national restrictions are eased over Christmas. We wanted to play our part and help people reunite with loved ones. Relaxing our on-board social distancing measures was not an option so we decided to double the seating capacity on some of our most popular services by doubling the number of carriages.

“This means we’ve now added an extra 93 seats for reservation within the added capacity. We will be extending our current reservation-only policy to the extra seating in order to ensure social distancing is maintained on board, so please reserve your seat as soon as possible.”

Mr McLean also reminded those planning festive travel that Grand Central would not operate any services between December 25 and January 1, while Kings Cross was closed for major engineering work between December 26 and 30