More rail disruption for travellers on West Coast mainline

Virgin Trains services will not operate to or from London Euston on Easter Sunday (April 1) to allow essential rail upgrades to take place at Wembley.

Train customers planning trips to and from Euston on the West Coast main line are urged to plan their travel on other days.

As part of Britain’s Railway Upgrade Plan, Network Rail engineers are doing preparatory work to enable the wholesale replacement of north Wembley junction in August.

While the railway is closed to trains for Network Rail’s work, HS2 Ltd will make use of the opportunity to carry on with preparatory work for Britain’s new high speed railway.

Euston station’s Easter Sunday shutdown will affect rail services throughout the West Coast main line including at Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, and Preston. Rail replacement buses will be in operation.

Services on Saturday March 31 and the Monday April 2 of the long weekend will also be busier as fewer trains than normal will be running.

Martin Frobisher, managing director of Network Rail’s London North Western route, said: “We have agreed with our partners at Virgin Trains and London Northwestern Railway to do this work on Easter Sunday as it is typically a far less busy train travel day than usual.”

Meanwhile, Highways England is preparing to lift and complete hundreds of miles of roadworks to help people travelling over Easter – with more than one billion miles set to be travelled in the run-up to the bank holiday.

Teams from Highways England are working around the clock to remove 300 miles of roadworks – meaning 99 per cent of motorways and major A roads will be roadworks-free in time for Easter.