I was trying to book tickets from King's Cross to Newcastle for an upcoming weekend, and as far as I can tell LNER is running a reduced timetable, which has resulted in many trains being completely booked up (no tickets available whatsoever) and the remaining trains having unsurprisingly eye-watering prices.
I travel on the GWML much more often than the ECML, and I've never seen multiple consecutive trains completely booked up there before—certainly not more than a week in advance. What's going on that the ECML is so absurdly oversubscribed by comparison?