East Midlands Railway will restore some Intercity services from 31 August after cutting its timetable in July because of reliability problems with its new Aurora trains. The move matters because it should improve connections on the Midland Main Line while signalling that the operator believes service stability has begun to recover.

Intercity operations will rise from 87% to 92% of the planned timetable, including five weekday and three weekend Sheffield services, plus three weekday and one weekend Nottingham services. EMR says the reduced timetable, introduced on 20 July, better matched available trains and reduced short-notice cancellations, though issues with both the new Class 810 fleet and older Class 222 trains remain under an action plan with Hitachi and other partners.