Rail journey times to double in disruption
Rail journey times on the busiest line in the country will be more than doubled on Sunday as major engineering work causes severe disruption just before Christmas.
Virgin Trains is warning that it will take up to three and a half hours to get between London and Birmingham – a journey that using takes under 90 minutes – as it is forced to tear up its normal timetable due to £125 million of signalling work taking place in the Bletchley area.
The company will be running services between London and Coventry on Sunday and on Christmas Eve and users may have to change trains to complete their journeys.
Services in the Black Country and Staffordshire will continue to run but anyone wanting to travel south of Birmingham has been advised to use the Chiltern Railways line from Moor Street, which has put on 10,000 extra seats.
Trains will not run between London Euston, Milton Keynes and Rugby.
An hourly service will run on a diverted route between London Euston and Nuneaton, via Banbury, with a small number of trains extended to Birmingham New Street and Crewe
An hourly service will run between Rugby, Glasgow Central, Liverpool and Manchester Piccadilly.
On Sunday the journey time between London Euston and Birmingham New Street is set to take three hours 29 minutes including the change at Coventry.
Going between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street with Chiltern will take two hours.
On Christmas Eve the journey will take up to two hours 50 minutes on Virgin services.
Disruption starts again on Thursday, December 27 until January 2 when London Midland trains will be replaced by buses between Rugeley Trent Valley and Stafford and between Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford.
Virgin Trains between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly/Liverpool Lime Street are diverted via Stoke-on-Trent and will not call at Wilmslow or Stafford.
Around 130 buses will be running throughout the West Midlands on Boxing Day.
