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RAIL passengers commuting over the Easter period can expect major disruptions to services.

The UK’s biggest intercity line will be closed for six consecutive days early next month.

Engineering work has been planned for the busy route, which carries over 75 million passengers a year, from Good Friday (April 3) to Wednesday, April 8.

There will be no west coast mainline services between London Euston and Milton Keynes on these dates, with services between Preston and Lancaster halted on Easter weekend (Saturday, April 4 and Sunday, April 5).

The upgrade works are part of a wider £400 million project, which will see improvements to the line’s reliability as well as repairs to tracks.

Jake Kelly, Network Rail’s regional director for the north-west and central region spoke to the Guardian about the latest upgrade.

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“The four-day period at Easter gives us a valuable opportunity to complete projects that simply can’t be delivered during a normal weekend,” he said.

“This ensures we maximise the time our teams are out working on the tracks.”

While the north London neighbourhood of Willesden, north London will see new tracks laid, there will also be repairs and upgrades at Harrow and Wealdstone station.

And a historic bridge in Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, which gained international notriety in the Great Train Robbery, is also scheduled for upgrades over Easter.

Kelly added that Network Rail is working hard “to keep as much of the network open as possible while carrying out these vital upgrades”.

Avanti West Coast will run services between Preston and Carlisle via the Settle-Carlisle line over the Easter period, while Anglo-Scottish services will be diverted via Dumfries and Kilmarnock between Good Friday and Easter Monday.

Network Rail has advised passengers to check before they travel on these dates.

Over 270 other upgrade projects are planned for various rail routes over the Easter period this year.

Eurostar offer an easy way to explore the continent without needing to hop on a plane, and a new rule change means it could become an even more convenient mode of travel

Eurostar has announced a change to its check-in rules at St. Pancras International in London in a bid to ease overcrowding and make journeys easier for passengers.

Currently, passengers taking a Eurostar train need to arrive at least 60 minutes before their journey and then have to wait in the departures area. However, the change will see passengers able to arrive just 30 minutes before their departure time.

The Telegraph reports that there are plans to allow passengers to board their Eurostar train as soon as it arrives at St Pancras, reducing crowding in the departures area. Speaking to the news outlet, Wendy Spinks, Chief Commercial Officer at London St Pancras Highspeed, said that she wanted the experience of taking the Eurostar to be more like a train journey than flying.

She said: “It cannot be the equivalent of an airport departure lounge. We see it being a really quick process. Going straight to the train is part of the plan. It has become too close to the airport experience, where you check in, go to security, wait in the lounge and then rush to the gate.”

The changes come as Eurostar prepares to expand its services, including the introduction of double-decker trains, as well as new direct routes to Frankfurt and Geneva, expected to launch from early 2030.

It’s also expected that by then, Virgin Trains and Italian operator Trenitalia will be offering rival services from St Pancras, challenging Eurostar’s monopoly on the Channel Tunnel route. Wendy went on to admit that bottlenecks in the departure areas were an obstacle to expanding these services and offering international trains from all five of its available platforms.

St Pancras has also recently needed to install new kiosks with the technology to run the EU’s entry and exit system (EES), which will be required at all external border crossing points by April 9.

Last summer, Eurostar and London St. Pancras Highspeed announced they were joining forces on an ambitious project to double the capacity of St Pancras station, enabling the historic building to handle 5,000 international passengers an hour.

Expected to cost £100m, the plans would improve the “international area and its connection to the main concourse, helping the passenger flow and customer experience” by the end of 2028. A further phase could see arriving passengers redirected to a lesser-used upstairs area, and this change is set to be completed by the end of 2030.

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Any new operators would share platforms with Eurostar, and passengers would need to make sure that they were boarding the correct train. However, it’s speculated that the expansion of St Pancras could cut check-in times to 15-minutes, meaning passengers could simply head straight to their service.

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