While more than 95 per cent of the UK’s rail network will be open as usual over the forthcoming late August bank holiday (Saturday 26 to Monday 28), some journeys will be disrupted by improvement works.

Thousands of railway workers will work on upgrades over the late August bank holiday weekend as Network Rail spends £71m on around five hundred projects across Britain.

Network Rail will install more than 7,500 metres of new rail and 2,400 sleepers, and will lay nearly fifteen thousand tonnes of ballast.

Bank holidays are often the most productive time to carry out essential improvement work whilst minimising disruption. Affected areas will include the following.

Track renewals and signalling upgrades will cause train services to be reduced to and from London Euston from 8pm on Saturday (26) until Tuesday (29).

New equipment and technology is being installed between Welwyn Garden City and Hitchin, as part of preparations for digital signalling to be used from 2025.

Upgrade work in the Peterborough area will enable a move of local signalling control to an operating centre in York. Between late on Saturday 26 August and early on Monday 28 August, buses and coaches will replace trains on the East Coast Main Line between Grantham, Royston and Potters Bar/Hertford North and between Grantham/Leicester and Ely; there will be no train services at Peterborough.

Signal and crossings renewals and maintenance work at New Cross will mean that trains will not run out of London Charing Cross and Waterloo East on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27. Services will be diverted to start and end from London Victoria or Blackfriars.

As previously reported, the finishing stages of a resignalling scheme on the lines between London Waterloo and Windsor will be carried out at the end of this month. The existing system is controlled by the Feltham Area Signalling Centre, dates back to 1974 and has become less reliable and harder to maintain. Buses will replace trains between Staines and Windsor and Eton Riverside on Saturday 26 August and between Barnes and Virginia Water, Twickenham and Virginia Water and Twickenham and Windsor & Eton Riverside from Sunday 27 August to Friday 1 September.

CrossCountry services between Birmingham New Street and Derby will be affected from Saturday 26 to Monday 28, as work is carried out in preparation for HS2. Trains to and from Scotland and the North East will operate on an alternative route, and journey times could be extended by up to an hour.  On Sunday 27, not all services to and from Scotland and the North East will call at Tamworth.

Jake Kelly, Network Rail’s director of System Operator, said: “As always, we’ve carefully planned our engineering work to ensure the vast majority of the railway will be open for business as usual this bank holiday, so passengers can rely on the railway to get them where they need to be as they make the most of the long weekend.

“Disruptions to journeys on some routes is unavoidable when carrying out certain pieces of work however, so please make sure to check with National Rail Enquiries or your train operator before you travel.”