TRAIN passengers are being urged to check before travelling as there will be a reduced service on the East Coast Main Line on the weekend of July 13 and 14.

As part of a £1.2billion upgrade into the route - which connects London and Edinburgh via York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle - Network Rail engineers will be removing old signalling equipment from a disused railway tunnel at King’s Cross station.

The equipment needs to be removed so that new track can be laid in the tunnel which will reopen to increase the number of tracks into King’s Cross station from four to six.

Work is also taking place elsewhere along the route at the same time over the weekend of July 13 in a bid to keep the number of times which passengers are disrupted as low as possible.

Once complete in 2021, the upgrade plan is set to create capacity for up to 10,000 extra seats a day on long-distance services, it will also mean faster journeys and increased reliability for passengers.

Passengers are urged to check before travelling via National Rail Enquiries, with their train operator or on eastcoastupgrade.co.uk. Services that are running are likely to be busier than usual.