Rail passengers to expect delays over Easter weekend

Easter weekend train passengers may have to relive the Christmas travel chaos that hit our railways last year it seems.

Network Rail already has plans to close various lines meaning that all services in and out of Euston will be affected as well as some lines out of London's Charing Cross, Paddington, London Bridge stations as well as some services in Watford and Reading.

London Midland's Head of West Coast services, Terry Oliver has warned passengers to avoid travelling at Easter, the Independent reports.

He said: "London Midland will be running rail-replacement bus services over the Bank Holiday weekend, but journeys will involve changes and will take much longer than normal,"

Network Rail has said that they have put plans in place to avoid the delays that plagued the festive season, the BBC reports.

Services in Surrey, Cheshire, Lancaster and Peterborough are among the lines affected by the planned works.

Ongoing engineering works in Shenfield will also affected routes from London's Liverpool Street to Norwich and Southend.

There have been no Greater Anglia trains running on the London to Norwich line since the end of January this year due to track replacement work through Colchester.

Customer Service Director at Greater Anglia, Andrew Goodrum, said: "We're very grateful for the cooperation and understanding of our customers over the past eight weekends" the Chelmsford Weekly News reports.

The final work on the line was completed last weekend although there will still be no direct service on the Easter weekend.

Thousands of travelers faced nightmare situations over the festive period last year when trying to get away for the Christmas break.

£200 million pounds worth of engineering works were carried out during Christmas week and there were restricted and disrupted services all over the country, the Telegraph reported.

Mark Carne, Network Rail's chief executive, surrendered his bonus last year after the chaos on the tracks.

A Network Rail report later found that a lack of train drivers had also caused the rail issues at Christmas.

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