Letter: Track stars

The new flagship Flying Scotsman offers a four-hour journey time between the Scottish and English capitals, calling only at Newcastle and arriving in London at 09.40. East Coast now also provides an extra five weekday services between Edinburgh and London, with seven more services on Saturdays and five more on Sundays.

We promised to maintain our through-services between Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and London, and have done so. The last weekday train from Scotland to London was retimed following customer feedback to arrive in London at 23.36 instead of 00.05 in the previous timetable to allow connections with London Underground services.

Services from Glasgow to London, with the exception of one daily East Coast service, are provided on the West Coast route, which offers faster and more frequent journeys.

Club 55 is a ScotRail promotional offer which offers a discount return fare within Scotland at off-peak times.

On Sundays the first ScotRail through service to Edinburgh departs Aberdeen at 15.10. As a result, so many passengers were using Club 55 on East Coast's Aberdeen to Edinburgh trains that our services were becoming overcrowded, depriving full fare paying passengers of space.

This left us with no option other than to withdraw from the offer on Sundays on the Aberdeen route.

In all, East Coast's new timetable is good news for Scottish passengers and adds capacity where demand is greatest, at a time when more people are choosing to travel with us.

Neal Smith

East Coast Main Line Company

Skeldergate

York