East Midlands Trains are warning their passengers to plan ahead as essential improvement work is taking place. It will be affecting between Kentish Town and London St Pancras this Christmas.

Upgrades to the concrete slabs which support the track through Kentish Town are needed. This is to keep the large number of passengers that pass through the station safe

Although East Midlands Trains will still be able to run services. Which will be from London St Pancras to Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham and Leicester. There will be some changes to the departure times. Please check before you travel (link to EMTs Website is below)

Thameslink will continue to serve Kentish Town, but there will be no service south of St Pancras.

The work is taking place between 23rd December and 1st January.

Fewer passengers travel around Christmas, so the work has been deliberately planned to take place around this period.

What did the officials say?

Rob McIntosh, Managing Director for Network Rail’s London North Eastern and East Midlands route, said: “The track through Kentish Town sees thousands of trains and millions of passengers travel over it every year which places an incredible strain on the infrastructure that supports it, particularly the concrete slab on which the rails sit. The slab was laid in the late 1970s and while our routine maintenance programme has preserved it until now, major work is needed to allow it to continue to meet the needs of the communities and economies our railway serves. We’ve worked closely with our train operators to keep disruption to a minimum and our advice is to plan ahead this Christmas.”

Jake Kelly, Managing Director of East Midlands Trains, added: “We’ve worked closely with Network Rail to ensure that disruption is kept to a minimum for our customers whilst this important work takes place. We’ll continue to offer direct train services to London for customers who may still need to work or for anybody who wants to visit family or friends or even enjoy a Christmas day out in London. There will be some changes to our regular timetable though and we’d, therefore, urge people to check before traveling at eastmidlandstrains.co.uk.”

• Visit the East Midlands Trains Website
  For more information