CAPACITY on the railway line through Malton is set to increase from 169 seats per hour to 450 by December next year, a meeting of councillors has been told.

The York to Scarborough route is destined both for larger TransPennine trains and a new hourly Northern service.

Addressing North Yorkshire County Councillors at a meeting of the Thirsk & Malton Constituency Committee held in Norton on Thursday, Graham North, of the Transport for the North group, said that the new TransPennine trains will have a capacity of about 300 seats, up from the 169 currently.

“These are brand new trains, they’re literally just arriving in the country now and are in test on the west coast,” he said.

In addition to an additional hourly Northern service from December 2019, they will push capacity to 450.

He said that 350,000 people use Malton station annually - a 26 per cent increase over 10 years - but he added: “I think we’ll be able to cope with future capacity demands.”

In the longer term, over the next 10 years, the Transpennine Route Upgrade will mean journey times of just over an hour between Malton and Manchester. “This is the kind of step change we’re working towards,” he said.

However, concerns among the councillors were less about capacity or speed and more about reliability - particularly following the line’s troubled summer of delays and cancellations after botched timetable changes in May.

Mr North said that reliability was up to 80 per cent after the lows of summer, and that TransPennine aimed to improve it further.

And although councillors praised the new early and late trains, councillors also voiced concerns about how the Malton-Norton level crossing will cope with doubled services.

Barry Mason, assistant director of highways for North Yorkshire County Council, said the authority had about £600,000 from the Brambling Fields “complementary measures” scheme to spend on improvements. He said: “We’re looking at the HGV temporary ban and looking at other measures that can be done to improve the situation.”