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ARCHIVED - Murcia and Alicante trains to Madrid only stop at Chamartin and not Atocha from today onwards
The trains from Alicante to the Spanish capital, which are the only option for passengers from Murcia, now stop 20 minutes further from the centre of Madrid
As of today, Tuesday September 13, most of the trains to Madrid from Alicante and Murcia will no longer stop at the Puerta de Atocha station in the capital and will instead go straight through to the much more northerly station of Charmartín.
The trains that travel from Alicante to Madrid – which is the way passengers from Cartagena can travel to the Spanish capital using a connecting bus service – as well as one of the three high-speed AVE trains from Orihuela, will stop passing through Atocha station and will end their journey at Chamartín.
Puerta de Atocha will only continue to be the terminus station for the other two high-speed AVE trains from Alicante, which connect with Murcia and Cartagena via shuttle buses.
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This change in the route of the line from Alicante to the Spanish capital, which is also currently the only railway connection to Madrid available to people in the Murcia Region, comes after the addition of new sections in the south of Madrid that allow the AVE trains to reach Charmartín.
The decision to move the final stop for trains from Murcia and Alicante from Atocha to Chamartín has provoked complaints from passengers, given that Chamartín is located much further from the city centre of Madrid and the journey time into Madrid will now take between 15 and 20 minutes more, in addition to the travel time on the Cercanías, shuttles or buses to Alicante or Albacete.
In the future there are plans to build a ‘through’ tunnel that will allow AVE trains to stop at Atocha and then arrive at Chamartín, but at the moment Atocha has been removed from all normal-speed train journeys and one of the high-speed ones.
In the coming months, AVE trains from Valencia are also expected to arrive at Chamartín.
Trains from Alicante to Santander and Gijón will also stop at Chamartín, and from Tuesday a new line to León and Ourense will be added, which increases the range of possibilities for travelling to the north of Spain. However, travellers from Murcia are still forced to go through Alicante to use these services to the cities in northern Spain, making the journey much longer.
Some travellers prefer to travel by car to Albacete to catch the train to Madrid.
Earlier this month, Renfe suspended rail traffic between Archena and Albacete, which was already used by only two trains a day in each direction since the line was closed to continue work on the Mediterranean Corridor between Murcia and Alcantarilla. The journey from Cartagena to Albacete is made entirely by bus.
The only train that still runs to Archena is the Intercity train from Madrid to Águilas, which departs on Fridays and returns on Sundays.
After the remodelling of the station, Chamartín will have 31 tracks with platforms, 18 of which will be standard gauge.
It receives more than 5,700 Cercanías trains a week, more than 400 Media Distancia and Avant trains and more than 400 AVE and long-distance trains.
Image: Archive
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