No trains will run through Westbury station in Wiltshire for almost a month.
The lines will be closed from 27 December 2024 to 23 January 2025, as part of a programme of track work.
It will follow a closure between 11 and 14 November affecting Westbury to Theale, during which all trains between London and the South West will be diverted via Swindon, with buses serving intermediate stations, and again between Westbury and Newbury from 10 to 12 December.
Track upgrades will be carried out near the station during the long winter blockade, as well as maintenance of the nearby Sherrington viaduct.
Trains will be diverted or replaced by buses, using an alignment that bypasses the station, with South West services calling at Frome instead.
Westbury is a busy regional interchange between Great Western long-distance services running east-west between Exeter and London, and regional services connecting Southampton and Portsmouth with Bristol and Cardiff. Trains from Weymouth to Bath also call.
The regional services will be replaced by shuttle trains either side of the blockade: Cardiff to Trowbridge, Salisbury to Portsmouth and between Frome and Weymouth.
There is also a busy freight yard at Westbury used by stone trains from Mendip quarries at Merehead and Whatley, and home to a GWR driver depot.
The area was resignalled in 1985, when the Down Salisbury platform line was closed. More recently there have been proposals to reopen Westbury’s “Platform 0” to enable hourly stopping services from London to extend beyond Bedwyn to Pewsey and Westbury, featuring the recently-dropped idea of a Devizes Parkway station.
The challenges for passengers will be compounded by work at Old Oak Common in west London, as work advances on the interchange between GWR and HS2.
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