THE most overcrowded service on East Midlands Trains' network will have carriages from next year – providing an extra 1,500 seats a day.

The Department for Transport is paying for East Midlands Trains to lease four extra Class 156 trains from May 2011.

The carriages will be used on services between Nottingham and Skegness and from Lincoln to Leicester.

This will then allow a number of refurbished Class 158 trains to strengthen services on the busiest stretch of railway – connecting Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool.

An extra 10 services every weekday will be doubled in size to four-car trains, providing 1,500 more seats daily, between Nottingham and Liverpool.

Also, the 1.52pm Liverpool to Nottingham service will be extended to Norwich, and the 5.50am Norwich to Liverpool service will operate as a four-car train throughout.

East Midlands Trains' commercial director David Horne said: "This is fantastic news for our passengers. The additional funding secured will allow us to provide over 1,500 extra seats on the route every day from 2011 and will go a long way to alleviating the current overcrowding on many services."

David Thornhill, chairman of Notts Campaign for Better Transport, said: "We are really pleased at last we have a solution to the terrible overcrowding on the Nottingham to Liverpool section of the route. This is very good news.

"But why has it taken the DfT year after year thinking about this?

"In fact, if you look at the wider rail industry, what they are offering us is the crumbs left on the table.

"We do have to be thankful but the protracted failure of the DfT to fund rail investment in the East Midlands has been desperately disappointing."