NEW and improved trains will be waved off from Barrow today in a special ceremony.

Featuring free Wi-Fi, air conditioning, and seat reservation systems the new Northern trains will be in operation on the Furness Line from today.

At Barrow railway station short ceremony will start at 10.30am with speeches by Northern regional director Chris Jackson and Tim Owen, chair of the Furness Line Community Rail Partnership.

This will followed by a wave off of the 10.46 Barrow to Manchester Airport as new services between the two stations are rolled out.

Barrow is among the first places in the country to get the new trains.

Mr Owen said he was pleased to see Northern listening to rail campaigners after years of working for improvements to carriages and rail connections.

He said: "It's taken a number of years to get to this.

"It cost £30,000 for a study into how to improve provisions between Barrow and Manchester.

"There's been a lot of work from campaigners and the community to get to this point and that will be something I will talking about in my speech at the station.

"It's something to celebrate that we have more routes between the two stations.

"And as well that we have the new trains, which are big improvement on the ones we had before.

"Overall, it will be a day of celebration for people."

Richard Allan, deputy managing director for Northern, said: “These new trains are the biggest investment in local rail services in the North for a generation and the whole Northern team is very proud and honoured to be able to introduce them to our customers on three of our routes from 1 July.

“These new trains represent a huge improvement in design, quality and overall experience for our customers.”

Northern said it has ordered 101 new trains making up a £500m investment, and following the introduction of the first nine new trains on 1 July, the rest will be introduced at monthly intervals through 2019 and into 2020.