Media centre

Thursday 21 Dec 2006

CHRISTMAS RAIL TRAVEL UPDATE

Region & Route:

National

Network Rail and the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) today updated their Christmas travel advice with the very latest news. Christmas engineering work

• Engineering work has been deliberately timed to ensure it causes minimum disruption - it doesn’t get underway until after the Christmas getaway
• Normal services operate today, tomorrow, Saturday and for most of Sunday with services trailing off in the late evening on Christmas Eve
• This work has all been pre-planned with information generally available to passengers some three months in advance
• The period between Christmas and New Year is extremely quiet on the trains compared to normal days and this is why this time of year is chosen for essential large scale engineering work – such as replacing bridges

Seat availability

• The mornings are quieter than normal this week as commuters take their holidays early. There are still plenty of seats available in the late mornings and early afternoon and even some in the peaks
• Cheap tickets are still available and some operators are lifting normal tickets restrictions in response to doemstic air travel problems. At other times, prices reflect pre-booking timescales – as with the airlines. Book weeks in advance and the fare is cheaper than just turning up and buying a walk-on fare, as at any time of year

Christmas Day and Boxing Day services

• For the past 40+ years there have been few services running on Christmas Day and Boxing Day simply because there has been very little demand
• In recent years more train operators have introduced services on Boxing Day and there are now hundreds of services running and could be more in years to come as travel demands change.
• Train operators running services on Christmas Day:
  • Gatwick Express
  • Heathrow Express
• Over 1/3 of train operators are running some services on Boxing Day:
  • Eurostar
  • First Capital Connect
  • First Great Western
  • First Scotrail
  • Gatwick Express
  • Heathrow Express
  • One
  • Southeastern
  • Southern

Fog

• Fog has very little affect on trains

Rail strike

• There is one strike planned, which will affect a tiny amount of services compared to the national picture – around 5% in all
• The Trades Unions plan the action on Central Trains for 24, 31 December and 1 January

Robin Gisby, Network Rail Director of Operations and Customer Services, said: “The run up to Christmas is always a busy time on the railways and we plan around these busy times. Between Christmas and New Year passenger numbers slump to very low levels compared to normal and this is why we target these days to do our largest pieces of engineering work such as replacing bridges”. George Muir, ATOC Director General, said: “Train operators are running additional services this week as people get home for their Christmas break. Demand for rail travel between Christmas and New Year is very low. We run one of the busiest networks in Europe for 363 days a year which is why we target the days between Christmas and New Year to maintain and improve it.” Passengers who want to take long distance journeys can still reserve seats up to 1800 before the day of travel. We recommend that passengers check the national rail website ww.nationalrail.co.uk for the latest information.