Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 23 March (HL5994), what are the minor line speed improvements on the West Coast Main Line, mainly North of Preston, that will enable non-tilt trains to go faster, but will not enable tilting trains to go faster.

The current West Coast Main Line (WCML) has been optimised for tilting trains which operate up to a maximum speed of 125 mph, whilst non-tilting trains are limited to operating at up to 110 mph.

However, north of the future Golborne Junction, track geometry on some sections of line may allow non-tilting passenger trains to operate up to 125 mph within the existing operational rules and without track changes. Further, minor infrastructure alternations could be made on the transitions between straight and curved sections of track to optimise the speed profile for non-tilting trains further, which would make no change to the speed profile of existing tilting trains. The journey time differential between a tilting train and non-tilting train would therefore be reduced.