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Wednesday 19 Feb 2020

Passengers advised to check before they travel this weekend between Winchester to Southampton via Eastleigh

Region & Route:

Southern: Wessex

Passengers travelling between Winchester to Southampton via Eastleigh this weekend are advised to check before they travel due to emergency engineering works taking place.

Following a derailment of a freight train on 28 January at Eastleigh station, engineering work scheduled for Sunday 23 February has been extended to include Saturday 22 February so that Network Rail engineers can replace a set of points that were damaged in the derailment.

The work will affect SWR, CrossCountry and GWR services and passengers are advised to check with their train operator before travelling. As this work has been scheduled at short notice, some of the online journey planners may not show the amended service.

On Saturday 22 February, London Waterloo to Poole and Weymouth services will terminate at Winchester and restart from Brockenhurst. Throughout the weekend, there will be no services between Winchester and Southampton, with buses replacing trains on a number of routes.

The engineering work is also likely to affect fans attending the Aston Villa versus Southampton football match on Saturday afternoon.

Once the work is complete, services will resume calling at Eastleigh from the morning of Monday 24 February.

Mark Killick, route director for Network Rail Wessex, said: “I am sorry to passengers who have experienced disruption to services over the last few weeks.

“Given that many trains from London Waterloo are currently unable to call at Eastleigh following the derailment, we needed to find a solution to replace the damaged points as soon as possible.

“Improvement work is already scheduled in the area this weekend, so, to avoid further closures, we will utilise both Saturday and Sunday to install the new points and enable services to, once again, call at the station.”