THE old Great Western Railway was sometimes referred to as the Great Way Round and passengers travelling by train from Oxford to London between Christmas and New Year’s Eve may get the same feeling.

Due to the closure of the main line through Reading for resignalling work, First Great Western will divert its trains to run via Banbury, where they will reverse and then join the Chiltern Line to reach London, from Monday, December 27 until Thursday, December 30.

A connecting line in west London will take trains into FGW’s normal terminus, at London Paddington station.

Trains will take about one hour, 40 minutes to complete the journey between Oxford and the capital, rather than 55 minutes by the direct route.

The line through Reading will be shut from 11pm on Christmas Eve until early on New Year’s Eve, while Network Rail engineers transfer control of signals to the new Thames Valley signalling centre at Didcot, as part of an £850m six-year project to increase rail capacity through the Berkshire town.

Network Rail is about to sign a contract for work to adapt two platforms at Banbury station for use by FGW trains reversing there. The work is due to be completed in November Spokesman Russell Spink said: “We need to do this work to ensure there is adequate capacity to handle the extra trains that will be running.”

Many of the services running via Banbury will operate to and from Bristol, the South West and South Wales, offering the first chance for passengers to make direct rail journeys between Oxford and the West of England since Oxford-Bristol trains were withdrawn in 2003.

These trains will also call at Didcot Parkway to connect with replacement bus services to Reading and Maidenhead, from where an hourly train service will operate to London.

FGW says that it expects a journey between Slough and Oxford, which normally takes 40 minutes by train, could take up to two hours 25 minutes, using a train to Maidenhead and a bus from there to Didcot before joining a train again for the final leg to Oxford.

Cotswold Line trains will operate as a shuttle service between Didcot, Oxford and Worcester.

CrossCountry trains linking Banbury, Oxford, Reading and the South Coast will also be affected by the closure.

They will operate between Birmingham, Banbury, Oxford and Didcot, from where bus connections will be available to Winchester for passengers travelling to Southampton and Bournemouth.

FGW spokesman Dan Panes said: “Full details of the train diversions and replacement buses are still being finalised, but we will do all we can to keep services running smoothly and minimise disruption for our customers.”

wcrossley@oxfordmail.co.uk