Christmas travel chaos for millions as UK’s two busiest train stations to shut
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The two busiest railway stations in Britain, London Liverpool Street and London Paddington, will close down for days after the last trains on Christmas Eve – disrupting journeys for millions of passengers.
In addition, the main line from London St Pancras to Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield will shut for nine days over Christmas.
This year’s festive season will be the first since 2019 in which train passengers have not been afflicted by Covid travel restrictions, rail strikes or both. But key rail stations and intercity lines will be closed due to engineering work – including three hubs in the capital.
London Liverpool Street
The hub for East Anglia, including the airports at Stansted and Southend, handles the highest number of passengers in the UK. In 2022-23 the average was 221,000 travellers per day.
When the next figures are published later this week, the total is expected to be significantly higher.
But from the last departures on 24 December the station will close for the rest of the year, reopening only on Thursday 2 January 2025.
Network Rail engineers will be working within the Bishopsgate tunnel approaches just outside the station. The project includes the installation of steel support girders inside the tunnel. In addition, new ticket gates are to be installed and work on renewing roof panels will continue.
The Stansted Express will continue to run four times per hour, but only as far as Tottenham Hale, where passengers can change for the Victoria line of the London Underground.
“Allow additional time for your journey,” the company advises.
The Elizabeth line, which runs beneath the station, will continue to operate.
Journey times between Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester and London will typically take twice as long as normal because of work elsewhere on the line. The journey to the capital will involve a train to Witham in Essex; a rail replacement bus to Billericay; a train to Stratford and the Elizabeth line from there.
London Paddington
The terminus for Great Western Railway (GWR) to and from South Wales and the west of England is the second-busiest station in the UK, with an average of 163,000 passengers a day during 2022-23.
But work on the controversial HS2 project will lead to the closure of London Paddington station for a five-day spell beginning on Christmas Day. Network Rail will also use the opportunity to improve track, signals and overhead wires between Paddington and Reading.
Some Great Western trains from Wales and Cornwall will be diverted to London Euston. Initial engineering work on Sunday 17 November – the first time the diversionary route to Euston operated – overran, causing chaos for the Monday morning rush hour in and out of Paddington.
A spokesperson for Network Rail said: “We’re so sorry for the disruption to passengers as a result of our over-running engineering work this morning. Investigations are urgently taking place so we make sure this does not happen again on this vital stretch of railway.”
After Christmas Eve, no mainline trains will run to or from London Paddington station until Monday 30 December.
Instead, passengers from Penzance, Plymouth, Exeter, Swansea and Cardiff will have hourly trains to and from London Euston.
National Rail says: “These services will not stop at Reading and you will also require a seat reservation for these trains.”
Normally anyone with a flexible “anytime” or “off-peak” ticket can step aboard a train so long as they don’t mind standing. This will not be possible on GWR links to Euston.
Links from Bristol, Bath, Oxford and Worcester will run as far as Reading, where London-bound passengers can change for GWR services to Ealing Broadway in west London or South Western Railway links to Waterloo.
The last Night Riviera sleeper trains before Christmas will run between Penzance and Paddington on the night of Sunday 22 December, arriving on the morning of Monday 23 December.
The first sleeper services after Christmas will run on the night of Friday 3 January, arriving on the morning of Saturday 4 January.
The normal Heathrow Express and Elizabeth line services to and from the UK’s busiest airport are also closed.
To reach Heathrow, the Piccadilly line on the London Underground is expected to be running normally.
London St Pancras
No trains will run on the Midland Main Line north from London St Pancras International to Luton (including the airport), Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield from 21 to 29 December inclusive due to the replacement of the Agar Grove railway bridge in Camden, north London.
St Pancras is the eighth-busiest station in the UK, with over 90,000 passengers a day. Eurostar links to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, as well as Southeastern trains to Kent, are unaffected by the closure.
Hourly East Midlands trains will run from Sheffield, Corby and Nottingham as far south as Bedford, for rail-replacement buses to Milton Keynes Central.
Intercity journeys to and from London are expected to take an hour longer, and pressure on London Euston will be intense, with extra travellers diverted from the Midland Main Line and London Paddington passing through.
Thameslink trains will be severely affected, with shuttles running south and north of London St Pancras.
West Coast main line
No trains will run through Crewe, one of the UK’s key interchange stations on Friday 27 December. After that, services will be below normal levels through to Sunday 5 January, due to resignalling work.
Avanti West Coast services to Preston, Glasgow and Edinburgh will be diverted through the Manchester area, adding significantly to journey times.
On Friday 27 December – when large numbers of passengers are likely to be on the move after the two-day shutdown – there will be no Liverpool Lime Street services on Avanti West Coast. The same applies on New Year’s Day.
Links from London Euston to Birmingham and Manchester will be reduced from three to two per hour.
On New Year’s Day, the line from Milton Keynes Central to Rugby will be closed. Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham services will start from Rugby.
Avanti West Coast will run rail-replacement buses between Milton Keynes Central and Rugby.
In addition, Chiltern Railways is running longer and additional trains between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street – a parallel route that is not affected by engineering work.
Cambridge
The east of England city will be affected by the closure of Liverpool Street station from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day. But Cambridge is also the target for widespread engineering work for 12 days from Christmas Day to Sunday 5 January 2025.
“This is to support the continuing construction of Cambridge South station, and also deliver the first stage of the signalling renewal programme of the Cambridge area,” Network Rail says.
The project will affect Thameslink and Great Northern trains as well as Greater Anglia services.
No trains will run on the link from Cambridge to Royston, Audley End, Cambridge North or Bury St Edmunds after Christmas Eve until the end of the year.
“Rail services via Cambridge are planned to resume normal service from Monday 6 January 2025,” says Network Rail.
FlixBus is running coaches linking Cambridge with London, Birmingham and Manchester every day through the festive season, including 25 and 26 December.
