Operator of South Wales to London rail services, Great Western Railway (GWR), is introducing a temporary timetable reduction due to high levels of staff having to self-isolation as a result of Covid.
GWR, which operates services across the Great Western franchise area, said the temporary timetable reduction will comes into effect from Saturday.
Services between South Wales and London will run to an hourly frequency at weekends as a result of pre-planned engineering works. However, a slightly reduced service will operate from Monday to Friday due to the impact of Covid.
There are also some reductions to long-distance services on other routes, which GWR said would ensure it can provide the majority of its usual planned trains.
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This will see the St Ives branch of the franchise reverting to hourly services on weekdays, while some other services in the west of England are also impacted. Planned upgrade work between Newton Abbot and Paignton means that no trains will run for the next two weekends – and a bus replacement service will be in operation.
GWR managing director Mark Hopwood said: “We are taking some sensible measures using the experience, knowledge and good processes we have developd over the past 20 months to give customers confidence in our timetable.
“In the past few weeks we have already taken steps to maintain service levels across the network, including cancelling all non-safety critical staff training.
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“Like many other businesses we are expecting prolonged periods of staff absence due to Covid to continue in the coming weeks and the objective of this temporary timetable is to provide a service that can be relied on, reducing the potential for ad hoc short-notice cancellations.
“This means reducing our timetable a little to shore up the large number of services we continue to operate. We have prioritised high-use school, college and other known key worker services and we very much hope that the changes will only be needed for a short period.
“We will be reviewing the need for temporary changes weekly and will update journey planners and our website with details of any changes needed for the week ahead.
“As always our advice to customers is please check your journey before you leave home at "