Passengers on some of Great Britain’s busiest railway lines face 10 days of Christmas engineering disruption, including five-day closures of London Paddington and Birmingham New Street and longer interruptions to some services.

Network Rail plans about £152m of work to improve reliability and capacity. Most routes will remain open, but passengers face diversions, replacement buses and, on the east coast mainline on Christmas Eve, journeys taking an extra two hours.

The largest programme centres on the approaches to Paddington, including the replacement of a junction near Slough. From 27 December until 4 January, most Great Western services between London, Wales and the west of England will start and finish at Reading. Some will divert via Oxford to London Euston.

Paddington itself will close for five days. A longer interruption affects Elizabeth line services west of Paddington and Heathrow Express services, which are not due to resume after Christmas until 31 January.

Birmingham New Street, the UK’s busiest station outside London, will close from the start of Christmas Eve until 29 December while overhead power supplies are replaced. No trains will stop at or pass through the station, and replacement buses will serve the city centre.

Christmas Eve travel between London, north-east England and Scotland will also be affected by work at Doncaster. Passengers on LNER and other east coast mainline services will face replacement buses between Newark and York, adding two hours to journeys.

The Great Eastern mainline from London Liverpool Street will close for 10 days from Christmas Day for track replacement in east London. Greater Anglia and Elizabeth line trains will not run through the affected area, and there will be no direct Norwich–London services.

Disruption will last longer between Leeds and Manchester: the closure of Huddersfield station will slow TransPennine services for six weeks from Christmas Day.

Network Rail’s group director, system operator, Anit Chandarana, apologised to affected passengers and urged them to check journeys before setting off. He said operators had worked to preserve services on the busiest travel days and provide alternatives.

The railway’s reasoning rests on lower demand: services generally stop on 25 and 26 December, and Network Rail says the days between Christmas and New Year are the quietest of the year. That provides an opportunity for major works, although passengers travelling to see family and friends will still face substantial changes.