UK rail passengers face ‘disastrous weekend’ of Easter travel disruption | Rail

Rail passengers face a “disastrous weekend” of disruption as engineering works and strikes hamper one of the busiest Easter getaways in years.

Dozens of services to and from London have been cancelled as Network Rail carries out 530 engineering projects across the bank holiday weekend.

There will be no trains on the west coast mainline in or out of Euston station until the end of Monday, which is likely to disrupt football fans heading to the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester City and Liverpool at Wembley.

In Scotland and the north of England, TransPennine Express apologised for a “disastrous weekend” ahead as its conductors staged industrial action in a long-running pay dispute.

Edmund King, the AA’s president, said the chaos on the rails would steer more people on to the roads as millions enjoy the first Easter weekend in two years without Covid restrictions.

As the getaway began on Good Friday, with temperatures of 22C (71.6F) in London making it the warmest day of the year so far, there was gridlock in some areas of the country – although the disruption was not as bad as initially feared.

An estimated 4.62m journeys were predicted to be made across the UK, with a further 22.48m across the bank holiday weekend in what could be the busiest in years, according to the RAC.

There were large traffic jams on the M20 in Dover as P&O Dover-Calais services remained suspended, with some travellers complaining they missed their ferries after waiting for hours. Images showed huge lines of cars stretching back for miles.

Ashley Griffiths-Beamon, 33, and his husband, Damian Griffiths-Beamon, 36, got married on Thursday and were due to travel to Belgium on honeymoon. They were left waiting for 180 minutes at Dover and missed their ferry.

“I’m upset and frustrated,” said Ashley. “We had lovely plans for today which have now been ruined.”

It came as the temperature soared to 22C in St James’s Park in central London on Good Friday afternoon – a similar climate to Athens and Madrid – and it was expected to rise further. The previous high so far this year was 20.8C recorded in March.

North Yorkshire experienced relatively balmy weather on Friday afternoon, with temperatures in Scarborough as warm as in Gibraltar and Istanbul.

Rail passengers have been advised to plan ahead and seek alternative routes amid widespread disruption until Monday night. TransPennine Express told customers to avoid its services for the whole weekend.

Train links to Heathrow are also disrupted, with a stretch of the Piccadilly tube line shut, while the Gatwick and Stansted Express lines are also closed over the weekend.

More than 9,000 flights were scheduled to depart from UK airports between Good Friday and Easter Monday, according to the aviation data firm Cirium. That equates to 78% of the total for the same period before the pandemic in 2019.

Good Friday was expected to be the busiest day, when about 2,430 flights were due to depart. Some travellers complained of long queues and cancelled flights on Thursday evening when many looked to get a head start on the getaway, with staff shortages and Covid-related absences blamed for the disruption.