NEW high-speed tilting trains are finally coming into passenger service on the West Coast Main Line on Monday.
The Virgin Pendolino should cut journey times between London and Glasgow by about half an hour.
The new timetable between London and Manchester will see a journey of just over two hours - a reduction of 35 minutes - while 20 minutes will be taken off the trip from London to Birmingham.
However, the trains will only tilt and reach their top speed of 125mph south of Crewe because the line between there and Glasgow still needs upgrading.
The £7.6bn project, which has caused disruption to millions of passengers, is due for completion by 2008/2009.
The upgrade between London Euston and Manchester started in May 2003 and involved about 9,000 people working a total of 24 million hours.
The West Coast Main Line was built in the 1830s and has developed into the UK's busiest mixed-use rail route and now serves about 75 million people each year.
It handles more than 2,000 trains each day, including 43pc of the country's freight traffic.
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