New 100mph trains will be introduced on the Carlisle-Newcastle line by 2019, says the man in charge of Northern Rail.

Arriva, owned by the German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn, took over the Northern franchise from Serco and Abellio this month.

It has already signed a £490m contract for a fleet of 100mph trains to be built in Spain for delivery by October 2018.

And Alex Hynes, managing director of Northern, has pledged that they will be used on the Carlisle-Newcastle line.

He was guest speaker at the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line’s AGM in Carlisle on Saturday, when he told the News & Star: “The average speed of services will go up. We want to get business travellers out of their cars and onto our railway.”

The new trains will have air conditioning, audio and visual on-board passenger information, power sockets for charging phones and laptops, and CCTV.

Mr Hynes added: “Because these trains will have power points and wifi, the time people spend on them will be more productive.

“It’s a double win.”

Arriva is committed to doubling the frequency of trains between Carlisle and Newcastle from hourly to half-hourly from December 2017.

One train an hour will be a limited stop fast service. Northern’s other Cumbrian routes are Carlisle-Lancaster via Barrow, Carlisle-Leeds and Oxenholme-Windermere.

Mr Hynes said that all Northern’s trains would be refurbished to the same standard as the new fleet, and all but the smallest stations would be equipped with video help points, ticket machines and a real-time customer information system.

The locomotive-hauled trains on the Cumbrian Coast line, introduced last year to improve capacity, would get a “slight refurbishment” but Arriva’s long-term aim was to replace them with modern rolling stock.

It is also committed to reintroducing Sunday trains between Whitehaven and Barrow from December next year.

Meanwhile, the meeting heard that there was still no firm date for the re-opening of the Carlisle-Settle line, which has been closed since February 9 after an embankment at Eden Brows, north of Armathwaite, gave way.

Some 500,000 tonnes of earth supporting the railway has moved.

At present, trains between Carlisle and Appleby are being replaced by buses but Northern hopes to run trains as far north as Armathwaite from May. It says that passenger numbers have fallen by up to 75 per cent because of the closure.