Travelling home for Christmas has come with a warning that rail services will be severely disrupted.

South Western Railway (SWR) says scheduled engineering work will lead to a much reduced service over Christmas and New Year.

At the same time, there are concerns that the spread of Omicron could hit rail staff, leading to last minute cancellations.

Several separate sets of engineering work will affect journeys through Woking, Vauxhall, Earlsfield, Southampton, Guildford and Ascot.

Rail replacement buses will be in operation on routes where the line is closed - and other routes may see a reduced train frequency.

The company insists the pain will be worth it with claims improvements to lines and signals 'will mean greater punctuality and resilience for years to come'.

As in previous years, there will also be an earlier close of service on Christmas Eve, no service on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and a Saturday or Sunday timetable will be operating from December 20 to January 3.

SWR have launched a dedicated webpage that covers key information for anyone using the train services over the festive period. This can be found here.

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The company said the Omicron variant is also leading to increasing numbers of staff having to isolate, so further short notice changes to services may be required. Details of late notice changes can be found here.

Claire Mann, Managing Director at South Western Railway, said: "After a difficult 18 months, we know our customers are looking forward to Christmas and the huge range of attractions and events available on our network.

"While the majority of our network will be running as normal over Christmas and New Year, there will be some changes to our timetable. We'd ask our customers planning to travel over the festive period to check the webpage before they head to the station."

Network Rail Wessex route director Mark Killick said: "Christmas is a busy time of year for us, as with fewer people travelling by train we have the opportunity to make improvements to the railway we can't tackle during normal working weeks.

"I know it's still a pain for people who are travelling and I'd like to say thank you to them for their patience and urge them to check before they travel.

"We need to maintain and upgrade the railway to keep it running reliably and we work closely with operators to find the least disruptive time to do that work."