Christmas railway engineering works

[condor]

The Christmas period is the traditional time for the railways to undertake engineering works.
Does anyone know when the reduced timetables are produced? I've looked on the British Rail website and input the start/leave stations and dates and all seems fine. However, I'm slightly concerned that they might just cancel trains at short notice citing engineering works as the reason.

[valiant]

Most train companies affected by Christmas engineering works will have already announced what services they’re running and updated their websites accordingly. If you can buy a ticket for your intended journey then you should be alright but do check your intended rail company as well as the National Rail website.

These things are planned months and in some cases a year or two in advance and a quick google will tell you what lines are affected.

Whether any short notice emergency engineering work will affect your journey, well nobody can predict that!

[numtumfutunch]

My recent experience is of 3 months notice

The full story is that I had Eurostar tickets and waited for the cheap tickets to be released for the UK legs

Trainline let you book months and months in advance but the operators website only opens at 3 months when you can get good deals if youre lucky

Naturally Id booked my Eurostar connection with a good margin of error however when I tried to book the train to London found out that not only were there no cheap tickets available but a major part of the journey would be on a bus due to engineering work leaving me pretty well screwed - we drove to London in the end. Trainline still showed the normal timetable, although their prices were similarly high.

TL:DR You're fine

Cheers

[ralphrj]

Details of engineering works here.

Apparently you can check if your journey will be affected here.

[12TS]

12 weeks is the rule I believe. They all know now, nationalrail.co.uk will give good info.

[condor]

Thanks for the replies - is not for me, but my elderly father who is travelling from Devon to Cambridge I'd far prefer he use a limousine service.
He didn't even realise there may be an issue with trains, travelling by coach/car he thinks would be too far for him and wife.

[tight5]

condor said:

I've looked on the British Rail website

Really ?

[condor]

Well....put that into google and it came back with the national rail website.
Same difference

[JB!]

condor said:

Thanks for the replies - is not for me, but my elderly father who is travelling from Devon to Cambridge I'd far prefer he use a limousine service.
He didn't even realise there may be an issue with trains, travelling by coach/car he thinks would be too far for him and wife.

Jesus that's going to be hellish over Christmas.

[condor]

I will try to dissuade him from it and to take his car instead, with an overnight stay en route and plenty of stops on the way.