East Midlands Railway Passengers warned of 'severely' disrupted services as maintenance starts

East Midlands Railway has warned of disruption ahead of Christmas Credit: ITV Central/East Midlands Railway

Major engineering work is going to affect passengers travelling to London through the East Midlands over the festive period.

Train operator East Midlands Railway (EMR) said the work would start today and continue to Sunday 29 December.

Passengers are being advised to plan ahead as parts of the Midland Mainline between London St Pancras and Bedford will be closed.

EMR say that services will be "severely disrupted", with journeys in Nottingham and Derby even involving rail replacement buses.

But the operator promises that the engineering work will be necessary to improve services in the long run.

Mark Budden, route director for Network Rail’s East Midlands route said: "We’re sorry that this essential work will cause significant disruption to journeys for many people over the festive period. We’ve worked hard to make sure the work will be completed as quickly and safely as possible."We’re deploying hundreds of people to carry out dozens of jobs to prevent further disruption at another time. Once complete this essential work will mean passengers will have smoother, faster and more reliable journeys."Timetables will start to be published this weekend so we’re advising anyone planning to travel between Saturday 21 and Sunday 29 December to check your whole journey, including connections as soon as you can."Though most of the network will be open as normal, there is engineering work on several parts of the network on different dates over the festive period.”

Philippa Cresswell, customer service director at EMR, said that the planned works would be "worth it" ahead of the the new Aurora bi-mode fleet, which runs on electric and diesel and is a more modern make of the current train fleet.

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