Progress on the modernisation of the Great Western mainline from Great Western Railway.
Work to widen the platforms at Bath Spa has now been successfully completed and Network Rail have moved on to work on the track around Swindon and Chippenham. This will affect rail services through Didcot Parkway, Swindon, Chippenham and Bristol Parkway over the late May bank holiday (27-29 May) and the weekend of 10 and 11 June. Full details of the revised arrangements
are on our dedicated web page www.gwr.com/Swindon2017
There will then be further work at Chippenham from Saturday 8 July through to Sunday 16 July. Services between London and Bristol Temple Meads will be diverted and there will be a reduced service for Swindon and Bath Spa during this period. More details are on www.gwr.com/Chippenham2017 where we also set out arrangements for weekend replacement services to Westbury and Melksham.
We will have additional staff at stations to help customers and we are using both traditional and social media, as well as information at stations and at ticket sales points, to highlight the changes.
We want the electrification upgrade to be as painless as possible, of course we recognise that any timetables changes, however temporary, cause some inconvenience, but these works will allow us to put brand new ten car trains on this route in 2017, and the work has to be completed while we continue to run services.