Rail operator hopes to avoid repeat of Saturday trains chaos

Transport for Wales has said sorry and has vowed to do what it can to avoid the rail chaos that prevented many local passengers from boarding trains on Saturday due to overcrowding.

With the festive season in full swing and revellers from the Welshpool and Newtown areas heading to the Shrewsbury pubs in high numbers over the past two Saturdays, readers told us that it was chaos on the Welshpool platform, and then again returning from Shrewsbury in the evening.

With this Saturday being the final one before Christmas to head across the border, the train operator has apologised for the problems which our readers have said is down to a lack of carriages provided.

A spokesperson for Transport for Wales told us last night: “Demand for our services was extremely high last weekend and this resulted in a number of very busy trains across the network. We would like to apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this caused.

“All available trains will be in service this weekend and we are using data from the previous weekends to identify our most popular services so we can add as much capacity as possible to these key routes.

“We will also have additional standby buses, a full customer support plan for stations and extra security to help get passengers to and from their destinations as quickly and safely as possible.”

Welshpool was recently revealed as the second busiest stop ion the Cambrian Line, showing a sharp increase in passengers over the past year.