How Hull Trains opened the door

Before the year 2000, people in Hull and East Yorkshire really didn’t need a timetable to work out how to get to London. The daily train left Hull at 0700 and returned from King’s Cross at 1720. The service, pared back over the years by British Rail, served to reinforce Hull’s undeserved reputation as the buffer stops at the end of a very long siding.

However, the city was growing. A population of 243,595 in the 2001 Census placed it as the 12th biggest city in England - larger than the likes of Stoke-on-Trent, Bournemouth and Derby, all of which had a regular train service to and from the capital.