South West Trains cuts rush-hour trains to speed up £275m upgrade

South West Trains has pledged 258 extra carriages

South West Trains will cut rush-hour services to speed up a £275m upgrade of carriages.

From Monday, the 07:24 BST service from Reading to Waterloo will be removed and the 17:05 service from Waterloo to Aldershot will start from Ascot.

South West Trains has pledged 258 extra carriages by 2018, a 30% increase.

The cut to services, which will continue until December, is to allow a greater number of existing carriages to be modified or refurbished.

Passengers have reacted with dismay to the news.

'Chaos and overcrowding'

Tom Hall tweeted: "How can you remove a peak service that gets into London before nine?

"It will cause chaos and overcrowding on an already busy service!"

Aahad Ali tweeted: "Why didn't you make train refurbishments during the school holidays? The whole line will be busier now."

South West Trains said in a statement: "Whilst we are fully aware that reducing services is never a positive step to take, the long-term benefits to peak-time capacity outweigh this temporary change to our Monday to Friday timetable."