Great Western Railway has warned customers to only travel if it is essential this weekend.

The train line is advising passengers to expect travel disruption between London Paddington, Bristol and South Wales on Sunday, November 3.

There will be essential track repairs west of Bristol Parkway meaning no trains can access the Stoke Gifford depot and therefore fewer trains will be available.

This also means no GWR services will be able to stop at Bristol Parkway on Sunday, including from Swindon.

A reduced train service will run between London, Bristol Temple Meads and South Wales and will not stop at Didcot Parkway, Swindon or Chippenham.

GWR have advised that these services will use diversionary routes which will add approximately 30 minutes to journey times and will be reservation only, so customers who still want or need to travel will need to book beforehand.

Due to the late notice of these works, along with the complexity of updating timetable systems, journey planners will not be fully correct until they are updated overnight on Saturday.

Passengers who have already booked tickets for Sunday, November 3 on the affected routes will be able to travel with the ticket on Saturday, November 2 or Monday, November 4 instead.

GWR Operations Director, Richard Rowland, said: “We’re sorry to customers affected by this disruption. To allow us to provide reliable services on Sunday 3 November and to be able to have a good start to service on Monday morning, we have had to reduce our service frequency for the day.

“With so many pieces of vital improvement work coming together we will be able to operate fewer trains than normal and where we are able to run trains, they are expected to be really busy.

“We are encouraging people to travel on alternative days where they are able to do so on the routes affected.”

More disruption is expected on Sunday, November 17 when no mainline trains will run to or from London Paddington all day and on Sunday, November 24 all GWR services will start or terminate at Reading until 11:15.

Additionally, all GWR services will start from or terminate at Reading on Sunday, December 1 until 10:30.

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