Travel disruption: Why are the trains always chaotic at Christmas?

Xmas Disruption - Why Are The Trains Always Chaotic At Christmas?Simon Calder and PA

Transcript

00:00Britain's rail network is in a terrible mess. It's a Victorian network that has been gradually

00:10rotting over the decades and so it needs a vast amount of work. And the train companies

00:17and Network Rail insist that Christmas is the appropriate time to do some really serious

00:24closures to allow engineers to, for example, replace bridges and do all kinds of very heavy

00:34duty work that simply for the rest of the year would inconvenience millions of passengers.

00:41The big problem, of course, with doing rail engineering work at Christmas is that so many

00:46people who don't normally travel by train would really like to, but they're going to

00:52find that there's all kinds of rail improvement works underway which is going to make that

00:58impossible. I think Britain is alone in closing down all its trains for Christmas Day itself

01:07and indeed for having such extensive rail engineering work right through the festive

01:12season. Other countries will perhaps, maybe in the spring or autumn, close lines for several

01:20days, sometimes several weeks to undertake the work rather than squeezing it all in at

01:27a time when people often are very desperate to travel.