Great Western Coffee Shop

Have just been informed of the details surrounding the Christmas engineering work and the disruption that it will cause.

There will be NO trains operating in the Reading area for a period of 8 days after Christmas.

Railheads will be at Maidenhead, Wolkingham, Newbury and Didcot Parkway.

Have been told that there will be a few HST services diverted to run via the Chiltern Line reversing at Banbury.

This is the start of work required to move Reading Signal Box to the new facility at Didcot.

If that's true then the railways really have taken to heart the criticisms of bus substitutions.

Banbury's a long way round though. Shame the Bicester chord hasn't been built. Looks like it could have been exceedingly useful over the next few years. 

Is it not going to be possible to serve Twyford? Trains can reverse there west-to-east in platform 4 and it would allow the Henley branch to have a connecting service to Paddington.

Would like to point out that I am 99.9% certain this applies to Dec 2010 and not this year.

Would make sense that this is the case because an 8 day work is a major closure that FGW would by now already be priming passengers for like they are doing for Southampton Tunnel closure at the end of the year and that just affects one of their routes.

2010 not 2009!! The major FGW block this Christmas is Bristol Parkway - Newport with Lydney-Newport (the usual diversion route) also closed all due to the Newport re-signalling project. Trains Pad-BTW and NPT-SWA. Buses in between. Pompey services to/from BPW; Taunton services to/from BTM. Effective 24/12/09 - 04/01/10. The Southampton Tunnel closure will also affect FGW trains during this period

Nuts. I'm likely to be travelling that way a few times over Christmas. Oh well...

As a bit of an aside, there are posters at stations up and down Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor saying that major track renewal work is being carried out on the route at the moment. The extent of the disruption...? Five-minute delays to some services. I'm trying to figure out how they manage this given that for the most part it's a four-track railway with a complete absence of any possible diversionary routes. Are US maintenance practices really that radically different from in the UK or are Amtrak just playing up what is actually some fairly minor work?

It won't be possible to serve Twyford, any signals operated by Reading Signal Box will I expect lose it's service during the move.

Diversion via Banbury and then through to London Marylebone sounds interesting.  I like diverted routes, as it's a change from the norm. Will have to book a journey I think!

Christmas 2010 though?  That's ages away yet!

If you have knowledge of upcoming engineering works, do you have any idea when the next engineering works on the Berkshire & Hampshire route is taking place?  I'm patiently waiting for this as it should mean some rare express/limited stop services running between London & Bristol Temple Meads during that period.