Passengers travelling to and from London Paddington will see trains impacted this winter amid £27m track upgrades.
Engineering works will be carried out this winter to improve Dolphin Junction, an area of railway tracks between Slough and Langley. As part of the track renewal work, the railway will need to close on the weekend of 28 and 29 November.
To avoid mass disruption to its passengers, Great Western Railway (GWR) will operate special trains between London Euston and Bristol Temple Meads, plus between Euston and Swansea or Carmarthen.
These hourly train services will not be able to pick up or drop off customers between Euston and Swindon, including at Oxford or Didcot Parkway.
Passengers looking to travel between Reading and London can use GWR trains between Reading and Guildford, then change at Guildford for services to and from London Waterloo.
To support this, an enhanced train service will be provided by GWR with additional trains running non-stop between Reading and Guildford in around 30 minutes.
GWR’s sleeper train The Night Riviera will still run from Paddington on the evening of Friday, 27 November, but the service from Penzance will arrive into Euston instead on Saturday morning.
The Night Riviera will then depart from Euston on Sunday evening, returning to Paddington on Monday morning.
Paddington station is also used by the Heathrow Express and Elizabeth line services, and will not be able to operate to/from Heathrow airport this weekend. Customers are advised to use alternative airport transfer services instead.
The Elizabeth line will operate a reduced service between Reading and Maidenhead only, with no services via Paddington for Abbey Wood or Shenfield over the weekend.
Only the Bakerloo line will be stopping at Paddington on 28 and 29 November.
The Dolphin Junction improvements will also impact 10 days over Christmas and New Year.
The Christmas closure consists of the railway shutting down between 27 December 2026 and 3 January 2027, following the usual Christmas shutdown on 25 and 26 December 2026.
GWR said this work will impact all train services between Paddington and Slough, but has yet to release further details of any temporary arrangements it may make.
The works are scheduled to be completed in January 2027.
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