Network Rail thank Newcastle fans for their patience with Carabao Cup travel disruption
Supporters travelling down to London for the Carabao Cup final with Liverpool next month are being forced to navigate major disruption to train services
Network Rail tell us they are continuing with the engineering work at Darlington station, despite hundreds of magpie fans travelling down to Wembley for the Carabao Cup.
They say the work has been planned for over a year and will be very disruptive to passengers at a later date if they change the schedule.
Luke Durston, Network Rail principal programme sponsor, said: "We are continuing with the works, but we're working really hard with LNER and other train operator colleagues to put on as many services as we can that weekend.
"There'll be more services between Newcastle and York, then people can connect on from York and get down to London that way.
"We're working really hard to mitigate the impacts and we just thank everyone for their patience.
"There are loads of maintenance work that we're doing up and down the line.
"Ultimately, we would have to come back in future and do that causing more disruption to passengers. It's all planned in so it's ready to go.
"We’re putting more services on, so if it hadn't been the League Cup final, there wouldn't have been quite as many passengers travelling, but we recognise that there's going to be more people.
"LNER are running an additional service, a shuttle service between York and Newcastle via the Durham coastline to avoid this area."