RAIL passengers travelling across the Great Western Railway network are being urged to travel early and to check their journey beforehand as Network Rail delivers its biggest ever Christmas upgrade works.
This Christmas and New Year, Network Rail engineers will carry out £25 million of improvements on the Great Western network, which they say will pave the way for GWR to deliver more seats, on more frequent trains, on quicker, more reliable services.
GWR Operations Manager Rob Mullen said: “We advise customers to plan their journey in advance at GWR.com, and with the work at London Paddington and London Waterloo, to travel on or before December 22 if possible.
“While we recognise the disruption this work will cause, and thank passengers in advance for their understanding, it is vital to enable us to run more of our brand new Intercity Express Trains.
The upgrades are part of Network Rail’s five-year railway upgrade plan – a multi-billion-pound investment in the rail network which will improve passenger journeys in the months and years ahead.
Network Rail’s Western Route Managing Director Mark Langman said:
"Owing to fewer passengers travelling at Christmas, we have an opportunity to carry out extensive improvement work with less disruption.
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Network Rail will have over 3,500 people working over the Christmas period on the Great Western upgrade. A breakdown of how journeys will be affected can be found by visiting nationalrail.co.uk/Christmas and gwr.com/christmas and following #XmasRailWorks on Twitter.
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