Scots face Easter travel chaos on West Coast rail line
THOUSANDS of Scots face holiday travel chaos after being advised not to travel on a main rail line south due to major engineering works.
Stretches of the the West Coast main line will be closed for four days over Easter, leading to delays of up to two hours on journeys between Glasgow and London.
The trip is expected to take around six hours because of the diversions.
This compares to a normal journey time of four hours and 32 minutes.
Virgin Trains are advising Scots to go to Edinburgh and use the East Coast main line to London.
But it also warned of overcrowding over the Easter weekend.
Campaigners said there would be many angry passengers as families seek to make the most of the holiday weekend.
Network Rail claimed it had learned its lesson after the Christmas fiasco when track maintenance works took longer than planned, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.
The firm said it was spending £58million on Easter projects because it believed passenger numbers would be up to 40 per cent lower than usual.
We strongly recommend passengers do not travel
A spokesman added: “The vast majority of the network will be running normally – but there will be significant disruption on some lines.
"Our improvement programme is fully focused on delivering a better service for passengers during a quieter time for train travel.”
But David Sidebottom, director of watchdog Passenger Focus, said: “What happened at Christmas cannot happen again.”
Ian Baldry, of travel consultants IBPTS, said: “Easter will be very frustrating for some passengers.
"It will only take one hiccup from National Rail or a subcontractor to make works behind schedule, as at Christmas.”
Bruce Williamson, of campaign group Railfuture, said: “Passengers will undoubtedly get annoyed by these works.
"Inconvenience is inevitable.”
The West Coast line will close between Glasgow and Carlisle and Crewe and Warrington between April 3 and 6.
Passengers can still travel from Glasgow to Carlisle but the 1 hr 11 min journey will take 1 hr 55min by bus or 2hr 23min on a ScotRail train.
There will be no direct train from Glasgow to London during the affected period.
Virgin Trains said: “We strongly recommend passengers do not travel.”
