East Midlands Trains is urging passengers planning on travelling over Christmas and New Year to check before they travel as Network Rail delivers huge upgrades to the railway.
The scale of the improvement works over Christmas and New Year mean there will be significantly fewer services to and from London St Pancras International.
Over Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, trains to London will terminate at Corby, and an express rail replacement coach service will run between Corby and Bedford to connect with Thameslink trains to Luton, Luton Airport Parkway and London St Pancras International. Trains from London St Pancras northbound will terminate at Bedford. An express rail replacement coach service will run between Bedford and Corby, where customers can connect with trains to Kettering, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.
As normal, there will be no East Midlands Trains services running on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.Jake Kelly, Managing Director, East Midlands Trains, said: “We know that people will be using our train services to travel around and visit friends and family over Christmas, and many people will still need to travel to and from work.
“There are some significant changes to our services this Christmas and New Year and we urge anyone travelling to check as soon as possible and understand how their journey will be affected.
“Timetables and advice can be found on our website or by picking up a leaflet at one of our stations.”
Rob McIntosh, Route Managing Director for Network Rail, said: “Christmas is our once-a-year-opportunity to carry out extensive improvement work without affecting passengers. We have dozens of projects which will be completed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day with no impact on train services. These projects will enable us to keep operating a safe, reliable railway for the communities and economies which we support.
“We know that our railway is up to 50% quieter than usual during Christmas and the New Year so where our planned upgrade work is more complicated to deliver, such as the projects on the Midland Main Line, we take the extra days either side of Christmas to minimise the disruption caused. In all cases, we work closely with the train companies to make sure passengers have accurate, timely information to allow them to plan ahead and we thank them for their patience.”
There are also amended and or reduced timetables on the days between Christmas and New Year on local and London routes. Passengers are advised to check their journeys before they travel.
For full details and to check East Midlands Trains timetables, please visit: www.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk/xmas2018
