Northern warn passengers ahead of new timetable starting days before Christmas- full list of changes

An altered timetable will be brought into services across the North West of England from Sunday December 15. A handful of services will be added and removed and others subject to slight re-timing.

There will be an increase in the number of seats between Blackpool North and Manchester Airport as the current four-carriage trains revert to six-carriage formation. Services between Liverpool Lime Street and Blackpool North will operate using four-carriage Class 331 trains.

Services on the Cumbrian Coast have been slightly re-timed to help improve performance and provide better connections with long-distance services at Carlisle.

As already announced by Network Rail, Salford Central station will be closed between Monday, February 10 and Sunday, April 20 for the next phase of the station’s multi-million-pound makeover.

Salford Crescent is also expected to be closed on some weekends between Saturday, 1 March 1 and Sunday, May 18, with more details to be announced in due course. Late-night services between Manchester Piccadilly and Wigan (via Bolton and Atherton) will continue to be replaced by buses on Sunday to Thursday nights while work to electrify the line between Wigan and Bolton is completed.

Matt Rice, chief operating officer at Northern, said: “The twice-yearly timetable change is an opportunity for us to adjust services so they better reflect customer demand. The Christmas period is also an opportunity for Network Rail to carry out engineering work whilst there are fewer people travelling on the network.

“For those travelling between Christmas and New Year we ask that they check their journey as close to the day of travel as possible to see if those engineering works will affect their journey.”