Christmas rail misery for travellers

Britain's holiday plans will be thrown into turmoil tomorrow when the new Christmas rail timetables are published. More than 45,000 passengers a day in the run-up to the holiday will be forced to travel by road or stay at home.

Britain's holiday plans will be thrown into turmoil tomorrow when the new Christmas rail timetables are published. More than 45,000 passengers a day in the run-up to the holiday will be forced to travel by road or stay at home.

Long-distance services will be running at only two-thirds of the normal Christmas level on the two main inter-city lines. Passengers have been told to book early if they want to travel by rail.

The rail industry admits that it probably will not be able to meet demand during its busiest period.

GNER, Virgin and other operators which traditionally provide extra trains at Christmas will be the hardest hit.

Rail companies argue that because Christmas falls on a Monday the demand for travel will be spread over the previous three days rather than being concentrated on Christmas Eve.

But the main passengers' voice, the Rail Passenger Council, condemned the continuing problems, describing the disruption as the worst since the Second World War.

"This is an appalling situation," said a spokesman. "Many people only catch trains twice a year and one of those occasions is at Christmas. A lot of people thought the disruption was going to be over by Christmas, and I think this announcement will lead to an awful lot of anger."

A Railtrack spokesman said: "We expect to have at least 90 per cent of services running as normal in the week before Christmas. But on long-distance routes it will be 60-70 per cent of the normal pre-Christmas service."

GNER, which runs services from King's Cross, London, to Leeds and Edinburgh, expects to run three trains an hour in the run-up to Christmas instead of the five it usually lays on to cater for the extra demand. "We usually carry 45,000 people a day in the run-up to Christmas but will only have capacity for 20,000," said a spokesman.

Richard Branson's Virgin expects to run three trains an hour from London Euston to the Midlands, North-West and Scotland instead of the usual six. It fears that demand could be more than 20,000 a day over the service's capacity.

Passengers using Virgin face extra delays because pre-arranged engineering work to upgrade the West Coast line will take place in the week between Christmas and the New Year. And services heading south will terminate at Watford, not Euston, on Christmas Eve and passengers will have to transfer to local services.