Passenger trains on Christmas Eve will finish by 3pm because of strikes, South Western Railway (SWR) has warned, with the last long-distance departures between many big towns and cities in the morning.

South Western Railway (SWR) is reminding customers to only travel if necessary on Christmas Eve as strike action and industrial action will mean a severely reduced service that ends by 15:00.

Parts of the network will be entirely closed on Christmas Eve and customers are urged to check www.southwesternrailway.com/strike for the latest information.

Following the reduced service and early shutdown on Christmas Eve, there will then be no service across the SWR network on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

On Tuesday 27 December, SWR will run a severely reduced service, with large parts of the network closed. RMT strike action at Network Rail means the network will be closed until midday, with first services starting even later.

The ongoing industrial action by the RMT is limiting the number of trains SWR can safely operate over Christmas.

As a result, SWR published a service plan for the period up to Monday 2 January, enabling customers to plan ahead.

South Western Railway's Managing Director, Claire Mann, said: "We are very sorry that RMT industrial action will cause so much disruption to our customers over the Christmas period. We share their frustration at what is a very busy time of year for travelling.

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"The industrial action has significantly reduced the number of trains we can operate each day and we have unfortunately had to make some very difficult decisions on where and when we can operate.

"We have worked incredibly hard to strengthen some services from today and continue to advise customers to check their entire journey before travelling."