London Paddington shuts for Christmas rail works. Will trains be back on 4 January?

What happened

The days between Christmas and new year are by far the quietest of the year and give us the best opportunity to complete major projects such as the power supply upgrades at Birmingham and Paddington.

Network Rail will close London Paddington from Christmas Day. It owns and runs Britain’s railway tracks. Its engineers will replace Dolphin Junction near Slough, where trains change from one track to another, in a £27.8m upgrade. Until the main work ends on Sunday 3 January, Great Western Railway (GWR) trains to Wales and the west of England will start and end at Reading or run to London Euston.

GWR trains are due back at Paddington on Monday 4 January. That is the first working day after New Year, when people go back to work. Elizabeth line and Heathrow Express trains to Heathrow Airport return earlier, on New Year’s Eve. National Rail says “brand new state-of-the art points operating equipment” is going in, the machines that move the rails at the junction.

Elizabeth Line and Heathrow Express services will begin returning from New Year’s Eve, with GWR services resuming access to Paddington from Monday 4 January.

Network Rail, press release on the Dolphin Junction upgrade, 14 October 2026

Two other big stations close in the same £152m Christmas programme. Birmingham New Street, the busiest station outside London, has no trains from Christmas Eve, and Network Rail promises “a full timetable” on Tuesday 29 December. The main line into London Liverpool Street closes for 10 days from Christmas Day so six sets of points can be renewed at Forest Gate, and Greater Anglia trains are due back early on Monday 4 January.

If the work runs late, people going back to work will find no direct trains into these stations. Some of the same lines also close in November to prepare: into Paddington on 28 and 29 November, and in Essex and Suffolk on the last three weekends.

Sources: The Guardian, Network Rail (2, 3, 4), National Rail, GOV.UK, BBC

The Pattern

We looked for cases where Network Rail closed a main London station or Birmingham New Street for holiday works that put in new equipment, and named a reopening day that was the first working day after the holiday. We found five such closures since 2007, all in London. Three reopened in full on the morning Network Rail had named.

The Read

The three most recent closures, in 2018, 2023 and 2026, all reopened on the named day. Last Christmas Network Rail renewed the points and overhead wires on two of the four tracks on the western side of Dolphin Junction, and it reopened that line on Sunday 4 January 2026, before the first full working week. Both late openings came at the very end, when the building work was done: in 2008 half of a specialist team did not turn up, and in 2017 tests of the signals took longer than planned. At Paddington the new points equipment must also be tested at the end.

There are reasons for doubt. Each time it was the same company deciding, Network Rail, and three of the five reopenings are known from its own statements. Birmingham New Street reopens on 29 December, while most people are still on holiday, and at Liverpool Street the job is new track and points with no new equipment to test. In 2008 the rail regulator fined Network Rail £14m after New Year works at Rugby ran four days late.

Sources: Network Rail (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), BBC (2), The Guardian