RAIL passengers are being warned to plan ahead if they are travelling between Christmas and New Year due to major engineering work in Oxford and on routes serving the city.

Work to install points to re-instate a loop line between Oxford and Wolvercote will begin during the shutdown of the rail network on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and continue for the next few days.

As a result of this, CrossCountry and First Great Western trains between Oxford and Banbury will be suspended all day on Friday, December 27, and until 2pm on Saturday, December 28, with buses standing in.

A reduced train service, with slightly extended journey times, will be in operation on the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Worcester from December 27 until New Year’s Day, due to limits on trains able to pass the site of the work between Oxford and Wolvercote and changes of rolling stock.

Buses will replace trains at Combe and Finstock halts on the Friday. Ascott-under-Wychwood and Shipton will have some trains but other stops at Shipton will be replaced by buses and again the following day.

Similar alterations at these four stations will apply from Monday, December 30, until New Year’s Day. The loop line will not be brought into use until May 2015, when resignalling of the Oxford area is due to be finished.

First Great Western’s Oxford station manager Dave Martin said: “The upgrade work is vitally important to improve journeys in future and will help to ease congestion through Oxford.

“To minimise inconvenience the work is being done at the least busy time of the year.”

Other engineering work linked to the Crossrail project to create a new east-west rail link under London will close some lines between London Paddington and Slough, meaning that services between Oxford, Didcot and London will run to modified timetables from Friday, December 27, until Friday, January 3, with fewer trains calling at Radley, Culham and Appleford.

CrossCountry trains between Oxford and the south coast will be replaced by buses operating to and from Winchester from Friday, December 27, until Sunday, December 29, due to the closure of the line between Reading and Basingstoke, while on Monday, December 30, trains will divert via Guildford, adding up to 60 minutes to journey times between Oxford, Southampton and Bournemouth.

Patrick Hallgate, Network Rail’s Western route director, said: “The railway continues to experience tremendous growth and we are responding to that through the biggest sustained investment programme since Victorian times."