Rail travellers face misery over Christmas and New Year
Rail passengers will face festive travel misery in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year, with many part-closures of lines over the holiday period.
The disruption is expected to start as early as Monday December 21 and go on until Sunday January 3.
Network Rail, who is in charge of the engineering work over the holiday period, said that more trains will run over the Christmas period period this year than the last one.
One of the biggest engineering operations is in the Southampton area, and will affect services run by First Great Western, Southern, South West Trains and Cross Country companies.
Post-Christmas disruption includes buses replacing trains between Nottingham and Derby from Sunday December 27 to Sunday January 3.
There are 28 separate engineering work projects in place on December 27, with 21 on December 28 and 16 on December 29.
Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary, Norman Baker said in the Daily Mail:
“This is unacceptable. We were promised a rail service which would operate fully all year round. Passengers will rightly feel they have been misled.
“The time has come for Network Rail to pay the fares of every passenger forced to use a replacement bus service.”
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