Train travel at Christmas will see worst ever delays

RAIL passengers travelling home for Christmas face the ‘ worst ever’ festive delays with engineering works expected to cripple major services.

About 20million journeys are likely to be affected as five of the seven mainline routes shut down for 11 days of work.

Some journey times are scheduled to double in length while those forced to use bus replacement services could face even longer hold-ups.

Even those flying abroad will be affected as services to Gatwick and Heathrow airports are cut.

The routes affected are London Paddington to the West, London Bridge to the South-East, London Liverpool Street to the East, London Euston to Glasgow and London Waterloo to the SouthWest. Major stations including Paddington will shut, while the London-Glasgow West Coast Main Line will be shut between Preston and Lancaster. One example will see the journey time from London to Ipswich almost doubling from one hour 11 minutes to two hours 17 minutes.

Network Rail has acknowledged that this will be the biggest pro- gramme of engineering works to take place over Christmas.

Ian Baldry of IBPTS travel consultants said: ‘Works taking place this Christmas are even worse than last year, which had the previous biggest ever Christmas works schedule.

‘Passengers face chaos. Network Rail don’t realise the impact their works have on people trying to get home for Christmas.

‘Travellers are sick of works – and then, after Christmas, there are January fare increases. Passengers have had enough.’

Last night a spokesman for Network Rail said: ‘The railway is open for business this Christmas and the vast majority of the network will be unaffected by engineering work.

‘We are making another significant investment to improve and grow the railway, getting it ready for fleets of new trains and thousands of new services in 2018.’