A timeline has been published for the planned return of a direct rail service between Swindon and Birmingham, last run in the early 2000s, after which passengers were obliged to change at Cheltenham, Gloucester or Reading. The £1.75 billion Midlands Rail Hub scheme would reinstate the route via Stroud and Stonehouse, adding more than two million extra seats a year and up to 130 extra trains a week, with an eventual hourly direct service.
Since the project was last reported on in November 2025, there has been what officials are calling noteworthy progress. In December, the scheme was discussed at a meeting held at Kemble station, one of the proposed stops, where a Gloucestershire county councillor set out the benefits for South Cotswolds commuters. Preferred delivery partners including VolkerRail, Laing O'Rourke, AtkinsRéalis, Siemens Mobility and Network Rail have been named, and a summer public consultation covered plans for two new sections of railway between Moor Street and Bordesley in Birmingham, allowing three extra trains an hour towards towns southwest of the city. The Midlands Rail Hub Alliance said it would review the feedback before consulting again on refined proposals in summer 2027, submitting a formal application to the Secretary of State for Transport in early 2028, with an outcome due in 2029 and construction starting in 2030, assuming nothing changes.
It is, by any measure, an impressively detailed timeline for a train that does not yet exist, running on track that has not yet been built, past music venues that have not yet been demolished, whose owners have objected on the entirely reasonable grounds of still wanting to exist themselves.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had a sister in Birmingham she used to visit without needing a connecting service, a map, or what she called 'a leaflet about the leaflet.' "In my day you got on at the station and got off at the other station," she said. "Now they're consulting on consulting about whether to let you." She added that she fully expected the hourly service to arrive the same week as her next bus pass renewal, by which point she might as well walk.
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the staged rollout had given him a new way of describing his five year plan to get his band, The Lanyards, a Friday slot at the Steam Festival. "Refined proposal expected summer 2027, that's basically where we are with the setlist," he said, before mentioning that Julie from accounts had suggested the band needed a bass player more than it needed a timeline, which Gary said he found "quite hurtful, if accurate."
Supporters of the scheme point to the wider prize: more than 12,750 jobs and better connections for over 50 towns and cities including Nottingham, Leicester, Worcester, Hereford and Cardiff. Critics, meanwhile, note that the project's own documents describe 2030 as merely when construction might begin, not when anyone might actually sit on the train.
Asked whether the 2030 start date could slip, a spokesperson said it was too early to say, which, by the scheme's own standards, counts as remarkably fast work.