First Capital Connect have today unveiled what the future of commuting will look like for hundreds of thousands of travellers from Cambridge and Peterborough.

Rail Minister Stephen Hammond unveiled the new First Capital Connect train which will be used on the Thameslink line.

The train will run on both the Peterborough and Cambridge route to London King's Cross, and also the Bedford to Brighton route.

At a demonstration in London earlier, First Capital Connect, the Department for Transport and manufacturer Siemens invited passengers to step on board a full-scale mock-up of the new train.

First Capital Connect Managing Director David Statham said: "Our services are some of the most crowded in Britain and this new fleet will give us more trains, more carriages and more capacity which our passengers desperately need. 

We want our passengers to see what they will be travelling in and hear how the Thameslink Programme is going to transform their journeys."

A total of 115 state-of-the-art high capacity trains are being built as part of the Government-sponsored £6.5 billion Thameslink Programme.

The first new trains will enter passenger service in early 2016 with the remaining fleet following at an increasing rate until there is one new train on the network every week.

From 2018 the trains will operate at high frequencies across central London with one arriving every 2-3 minutes between St Pancras and Blackfriars.

They are expected to run on Cambridgeshire routes from 2018.

2018 will also see the completion of the new London Bridge station, providing capacity for more cross-London services, including the extension of Great Northern services southward from King's Cross.

After the ExCeL showcase, the Thameslink Programme team will be taking a model of the new train to stations along the network.

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