RAIL bosses have cancelled about 25 trains a day between Oxfordshire and London for the rest of this week after admitting trying to run too many services amid major engineering work at Reading.

Passengers at Oxford station hit out at the problems. Only two of the four tracks through Reading station are operating until Saturday after the route between Didcot and London was closed over the Easter weekend for work to improve the railway through the Berkshire town.

Delays snowballed throughout the day on Tuesday after Network Rail reopened the line 45 minutes late, a train broke down at Goring & Streatley and signals failed.

As a result of Tuesday’s problems, the half-hourly express service between Oxford and London Paddington has now been thinned out and will only run hourly for most of the day until Saturday.

Stopping services to London will run as planned but other cancellations are still possible. Two Cotswold Line trains between Oxford and Moreton-in-Marsh did not run yesterday.

First Great Western spokes-man James Davies said having only two lines through Reading made it hard to get services back on track once trains and crews were out of place.

He said: “We had a timetable in place but the initial impact of these works has caused us to look at that again. “We did foresee that there would be problems and we put a reduced timetable in place to take account of that but it quickly became clear that the number of trains we were trying to operate through the area was affecting our ability to get punctuality back on track.”

FGW said that anyone with a pre-booked ticket for a cancelled service could use other trains and compensation can be claimed for long delays.

Network Rail spokesman Russell Spink said: “As we learned to our cost on Tuesday, if anything goes wrong it’s very difficult to get a good level of service back.” The modified timetable will remain in force until Saturday.

The line through Reading will again be shut on Sunday. Normal services are due to resume on Monday. Passengers at Oxford station were less than impressed.

David Humble-White, 34, from Freeland, who was going to London, said: “I think everyone appreciates that the engineering work needs to be done. But this is part of a wider problem with the train service in general. I get the feeling that it’s not really worth looking at the timetable.”

Oxford resident Juliet Mabey added: “I should have realised they wouldn’t be ready.”

For updates, call 08457 484950 or see journeycheck.com/firstgreatwestern