Work to improve East Midlands Railway's (EMR) Eastcroft train depot in Nottingham is now underway.

Eastcroft is at the heart of EMR's Regional operations and provides essential maintenance for trains which provide services right across the country; from Crewe to Cleethorpes and Norwich to Liverpool as well as calling at Hucknall station on a daily basis.

This latest £2 million investment will allow the depot to stable more trains at a time, install additional fuel pumps and upgrade the train cleaning facilities. The work is expected to be completed in June next year.

Eastcroft provides the majority of the day-to-day maintenance of the EMR Regional fleet, which is currently comprised of 69 trains from four different classes.

The fleet currently provides 251 services per day but this will increase to 269 in December as EMR reinstates some of the services which were temporarily removed in June.

The investment in Eastcroft will not only help to deliver the current timetable but will support the further development of EMR Regional services as well as providing more capacity for the additional three-carriage trains which will be introduced into EMR in 2022.

Neil Bamford, Fleet Director at East Midlands Railway, said: "We know how important a reliable and robust regional service is for our customers. Although the number of customers travelling with us is lower than it was before the pandemic, we are seeing more customers returning to our Regional services compared to Intercity.

"That is why this investment in Eastcroft, at the very heart of our EMR Regional service, is so important.

"It not only increases the capacity of the depot – it also helps to support the further development of EMR Regional services and will improve the service we can provide to customers, in the short, medium and long term."