Passengers planning Christmas journeys on some of Great Britain’s busiest rail routes face significant disruption as engineering projects close stations and interrupt services. Ten days of work over the festive period will affect several key lines, while some restrictions are scheduled to continue beyond the start of January.
Network Rail plans to carry out about £152m of improvements intended to increase reliability and capacity. It said most routes would remain open and that Christmas offered the best opportunity for essential engineering work because passenger numbers are lower. Train services generally stop on 25 and 26 December, providing a window for major projects.
The largest programme is expected on the approaches to London Paddington, where work includes replacing a junction near Slough. Paddington will close, affecting intercity connections with Wales and the west of England until January. From 27 December to 4 January, most Great Western services on those routes will begin and end at Reading. Some trains will take a diverted route around Oxford to London Euston.
The Paddington works will also affect airport and local connections. Elizabeth line trains west of Paddington and Heathrow Express services will not restart after Christmas until 31 January, extending the disruption for passengers using those services beyond the main festive engineering period.
Birmingham New Street, the UK’s busiest railway station outside London, will shut for five days while overhead power supplies are replaced. The closure runs from the beginning of Christmas Eve until 29 December. Trains will neither call at nor travel through the station during the work, and replacement buses will serve Birmingham city centre.
Christmas Eve journeys between London, north-east England and Scotland will also be affected by work at Doncaster. Passengers on east coast mainline services operated by LNER and other companies will need to use replacement buses between Newark and York for part of their trip. The change will add two hours to journey times.
Track replacement in east London will close the Great Eastern mainline from London Liverpool Street for 10 days beginning on Christmas Day. Greater Anglia and Elizabeth line trains will be unable to pass through the affected area, removing direct Norwich to London services. Separately, the closure of Huddersfield station will slow TransPennine journeys between Leeds and Manchester for six weeks from Christmas Day.
Anit Chandarana, Network Rail’s group director, system operator, apologised for the disruption and said the organisation had worked with train operators to maintain services where possible on the busiest travel days and arrange alternatives. He described the period between Christmas and new year as the quietest part of the year, allowing major projects to proceed, and urged passengers to check their journeys before travelling.
