Rail passengers travelling between Glasgow and England face three months of disruption as work to modernise the line gets underway

The work will see major disruption to services until June, including diversion and longer journey times.

The closure of the major line between March 4 and March 19 will mean there are no direct services linking Edinburgh or Glasgow to Carlisle.

It comes as part of a £164m Scottish Government investment to modernise Carstairs Junction for passenger and freight services.

Engineers will simplify and upgrade the track-layout to clear an existing bottleneck on the network - to help it cope with high passenger and freight demand.

Work on the route will be complex and Network Rail split it into three phases to limit the chaos cause to travellers.

Network Rail Scotland route director Liam Sumpter, said: “Carstairs Junction is coming to the end of its life cycle and with the volume of freight and passenger trains passing through each week it’s important that we modernise this part of the network.

“By completing this crucial upgrade work we will improve the capabilities and reliability of this strategically important junction, providing better future journeys for passengers and more capacity for freight.

“There’s never a good time to close such an important line but this is a huge and extremely complex piece of work that will safeguard the future of the route for years to come.

“We appreciate that this will cause some inconvenience and would like to thank customers for their patience during this time.”

The closure of the junction will affect cross-border operators including Avanti West Coast, Caledonian Sleeper, CrossCountry Trains, London North Eastern Railway and TransPennine Express.

Replacement buses and diversionary routes will be in place.

Phase two of the work, which will take place between March 20 and April 27, will allow part of the junction to re-open on weekdays.

Some trains will be able to run directly to Edinburgh and via diversion routes to Glasgow.

The final phase, between April 22 and June 4, will see most services return to normal during weekdays but the junction will be fully closed each weekend.