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Hull Trains

The open access operator linking Hull and East Yorkshire directly with London King's Cross, up to 94 trains a week. It started in 2000, pioneering open access passenger services, and has run five Hitachi Class 802 bi-mode 'Paragon' trains since December 2019, on electric power under the East Coast Main Line's wires and diesel beyond.

2000Current operator since
214 miles (344 km)Route miles operated
11Stations served
1.6 millionJourneys a year, ORR (2025–26)

Facts

Current operator since
25 September 2000
Main stations
London King's Cross
Type
Open access intercity train operator
Depots
Bounds Green, London (Hitachi maintains the Class 802s)
Main routes
Hull to London King's Cross via Brough, Howden, Selby, Doncaster, Retford and Grantham, with some trains starting from or going on to Cottingham and Beverley, and a few calling at Stevenage.
Operating company
Hull Trains Company Ltd, owned by FirstGroup through First Rail Open Access Holdings Ltd, which also owns Lumo's East Coast company. An open access operator, it runs at its own commercial risk under track access rights approved by the ORR, with no government contract. Its rights run to December 2032.
Class 802, schematic side elevation, 2 cars
Class 802 · Hitachi Rail, Pistoia (Italy)

Routes 1 routes · 11 stations

London King's Cross – Beverley: schematic, not to scale London King's Cross — change for Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, VictoriaLondon King's Cross StevenageStevenage GranthamGrantham RetfordRetford DoncasterDoncaster SelbySelby HowdenHowden BroughBrough HullHull CottinghamCottingham BeverleyBeverley

Schematic, not to scale. Ringed stations are interchanges. Each strip is one service route with its stops in order. Where fast and stopping trains share a route, the strip shows the one with most stops, and a route whose stops all lie on a longer one is left out. Station order from TfL open data.

StationZoneInterchanges
London King's Cross1Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria
StevenageNA
Grantham
Retford
Doncaster
Selby
Howden
Brough
Hull
Cottingham
Beverley

Stations, zones and interchanges from TfL open data (2026-10-07). National Rail interchanges are listed where TfL groups the stations together.

Fleet

ClassUnitsFormation and notes
Class 8025five-car Class 802/3 'Paragon' bi-modes (DPTS-MS-MS-MC-DPTF), built by Hitachi in Italy, leased from Angel Trains and maintained by Hitachi at Bounds Green; about 20% more seats than the Class 180s they replaced

History 9

  1. Hull Trains' first services run between Hull and King's Cross, three a day each way, with Class 170 Turbostars hired from Anglia Railways. The company is 80% owned by GB Railways and 20% by the founders of Renaissance Trains, Mike Jones and John Nelson, former British Rail managers.
  2. FirstGroup buys GB Railways, and with it control of Hull Trains.
  3. Four 125 mph Class 222 'Pioneer' units replace the Class 170s, cutting about 20 minutes from the journey; six return trains run each weekday.
  4. Five-car Class 180 Adelantes, formerly First Great Western's, enter service. They prove unreliable.
  5. FirstGroup orders five five-car Hitachi bi-mode trains for £60 million, financed by Angel Trains, after the ORR grants track access rights to December 2029.
  6. An engine fire on a Class 180 at Grantham leaves Hull Trains with no serviceable trains, and services are suspended. A High Speed Train hired from GWR helps out from January 2019.
  7. The first Class 802 'Paragon', 802301, carries passengers, from Hull to London.
  8. The ORR extends Hull Trains' track access rights by three years, to December 2032, after the pandemic's financial impact.
  9. An extra weekday and Saturday train from King's Cross to Hull starts, approved by the ORR in July 2025; the ORR turned down a proposed London to Sheffield service.

Sources 15

How we source figures →

unverified route strips: TfL's route data has Hull Trains calling at Newark North Gate, Peterborough and Huntingdon, and running to St Pancras; Hull Trains' May 2026 timetable shows none of these, so the St Pancras routes are left out and the strip shows only the stations in the timetable, full FirstGroup ownership: Wikipedia says FirstGroup bought the remaining shares in 2014; not confirmed in a source read, seats on the Class 802s: Hitachi (2016) says 61 more a train than the Class 180, Hull Trains says 20% more; no seat count was found, stations managed: the ORR's key statistics for Hull Trains have no stations-managed section, which it includes for every operator that manages stations; Hull Trains is taken to manage none, so nothing is shown

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