Major rail engineering may never take place over Christmas again following the recent over running works outside London King’s Cross and Paddington.

“The timing of these events over the Christmas holidays has made us question traditional thinking,” said Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne in a report published on Monday.

“While our industry has historically seen the ‘quieter times’ of railway use as the natural time to carry out essential project works, I believe that it is appropriate to challenge some of this thinking.”

A second review into the timings of future works programmes will be carried out on behalf of the Rail Delivery Group.

Group member Tim O’Toole, chief executive of train operator First Group, will oversee the forthcoming review. He said: “Major projects such as those completed over the Christmas period are crucial to the continued improvement and high safety levels of our railway.

“But thousands of passengers did not get the service they deserved in the days following Christmas. So it’s right that the industry takes a good look at how it plans improvement works, and the best time to carry these out.”

Monday’s report by Network Rail explained why engineering works at Holloway Junction north of King's Cross and at Old Oak Common outside Paddington failed to complete on time.

It said that a succession of equipment failures were to blame for track renewal activities at Holloway Junction being out of synch with their supporting engineering trains. It added there was insufficient contingency in the project plan.

At Old Oak Common safety validations following signalling testing took longer than expected.

Independent watchdog Passenger Focus’ chief executive Anthony Smith said: “Passengers understand that sometimes engineering works will go wrong. The acid test is how the industry deals with these situations. On the basis of this report and the events on the day the industry has a long way to go to restore trust in how it handles these events.”

(Photo: Network Rail)

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