Weekend rail work scheduled

More work is planned over the bank holiday weekend as part of a £9bn rail upgrade on the West Coast Mainline.

Work is to be completed on extra tracks that have been laid in the Trent Valley area around Lichfield in Staffordshire.

Network Rail will also return to Rugby in Warwickshire to finish some work which was not completed in January.

In February it was given a £14m fine relating mainly to work at Rugby in late December and January, which over-ran by four days.

'More resources'

In May it emerged the company must pay the record fine, despite asking the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) to allow it to spend £14m on track improvements instead.

There will be closures over the weekend in the Stoke area and around Rugby and the lines south of Rugby to and from London.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail director, said: "We had a good look at what went wrong in January and we learnt from that - better plans, more resources."

Many services will still run for passengers on the railways in the West Midlands region over the bank holiday weekend but people are being advised to check before they travel.