December 28th - What's Going On With Trains?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2021
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this gap between Christmas and the new year, the country's rail network undergoes a huge amount of engineering work. For those of us who are using trains during this time, planning journeys can be tricky. And, now, the Omicron Covid variant is causing even more issues.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, |
| 0:08.9 | whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actually away and having the time of your life. |
| 0:15.7 | Well, I am at the UK's busiest railway station, London Waterloo. I'm looking across the departure screen |
| 0:25.5 | and the train to Dartford due out at 5 past 2 has been cancelled. That is just one of hundreds |
| 0:35.1 | of train cancellations around the UK. |
| 0:38.3 | And I want it because so many people are finding themselves rather stuck |
| 0:44.3 | in the days between Christmas and New Year |
| 0:47.3 | because of what's happening on the trains just to talk through what the issues are |
| 0:52.3 | and what, this isn't going to be too helpful I don't think |
| 0:57.2 | what you can do to improve the situation so every year between Christmas and |
| 1:04.2 | New Year we get used to the idea of engineering works that is because well we've |
| 1:10.1 | already had the traditional Christmas shutdown, |
| 1:13.6 | everything on Christmas Day, almost everything on Boxing Day, no trains at all. That provides |
| 1:19.6 | a good opportunity to do lots of really heavy-duty engineering work without getting in the way |
| 1:26.4 | of too many passengers. But there's some bigger |
| 1:28.7 | projects as well. And the experience of passenger numbers, at least up until the COVID crisis, |
| 1:35.8 | was that the ideal time to do this is between Christmas and New Year. Not least because |
| 1:42.9 | you've got, well, certainly look at this week, what have we got |
| 1:46.2 | Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Bank Holiday, Bank Holiday, maybe three normal days and then New Year's Day |
| 1:53.6 | Sunday and back holiday. So quite a lot of non-normal time. And so that's why you've got work going on, for example, |
| 2:03.1 | at Leeds, at Bristol Parkway and various other places around the country just across from here |
| 2:10.5 | at London, more Victoria. Southbound services are diverted until the new year because they're fixing the line there. Not actually a huge problem because they're able to run trains from London Bridge instead, which is exactly what is happening. But there's always a surprise every Christmas, every new year and we've got one in |
... |
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