Festive period rail delays to start this weekend

Vital engineering work will impact Main Line services over Christmas and New Year

Some of the busiest railway lines in the south of England will be closed all day this Sunday, disrupting South Western Railway services across a wide area.

The tracks will be closed between Basingstoke and Woking. Some trains will be replaced by buses; some will be diverted, and others will not run at all.

It is the start of major engineering work, which will continue through Christmas and New Year.

Worn-out track at Brookwood will be replaced, and embankments repaired.

It is the biggest railway work over the festive period for years.

Passengers are being advised to plan journeys carefully, as services will not be the same each day.

Although travel by train will be possible, journeys will take much longer than usual and part of many trips will be by road instead.

"Performance has not been as it should be," said George Murrell, renewals director for Network Rail's Wessex region.

"We should be providing a first class service to our customers.

"So over the festive period, we are renewing a lot of infrastructure to provide a safe and reliable railway."

The work will include renewing switches and crossings, which enable trains to change from one line to another.

Three thousand metres of conductor rail, which provides power to the trains, will also be replaced, and there will be "a significant amount" of work to improve drainage.

Which services will be affected?

The South Western Main Line closes all day on Sunday.

Then from 23 December to 5 January, there will be no direct trains to London on the West of England line through Salisbury.

And all trains from Weymouth, Bournemouth and Southampton to London will be diverted up the Portsmouth line. That will take 45 minutes longer than normal.

Meanwhile stations including Winchester and Micheldever will not have direct services at all.

There will be buses instead of trains between Basingstoke and Woking, and from all stations in between.

SWR's Lymington branch line in Hampshire will also close for two weeks from 22 December.

On Great Western Railway, trains will be disrupted by work to create a new station for HS2 at Old Oak Common in west London.

From 27 to 30 December, most GWR services will terminate and start from Reading.

Passengers will need to use Elizabeth Line trains to Ealing and then transfer to the Underground.

Longer distance GWR trains will not stop at Reading. Instead, a few trains will take a lengthy diversion to London Euston.

Travel on these trains will be reservation-only and it will not be possible to turn up and buy a ticket.

For passengers on GWR, it is just the beginning of several years of intermittent disruption.

It will take until 2028 to complete the platforms at Old Oak Common. And no decision has yet been taken about whether some, or any, Great Western trains will actually stop there.