Sport fans, shoppers, and tourists face six months of disruptions and delays as a major railway upgrade arrives in South Lakeland on December 12.

The West Coast Main Line between Preston and Carlisle, which passes through Oxenholme, will be closed most weekends from then until June 11 next year.

The work is part of a £7.6 billion upgrade to the line, which runs from London Euston to Glasgow, to improve speed and reliability.

The disruption is likely to take one of two forms: rail diversions via Hellifield, near Settle, or bus replacements.

Rail diversions would add at least two hours to journeys but would mean passengers to Carlisle or Preston could remain on trains.

However, travellers to any other destination, including Lancaster, Oxenholme and Penrith, would have to go by bus.

Virgin Trains runs services on the main line and spokesman Kevin Pearce said "experts" were now hammering out the final details of how the alternative services would work.

A new main line timetable was launched on Monday (September 27), designed to help Virgin's flagship service, the high-speed, tilting Pendolino, go faster.

However, the first Glasgow to Euston train got off to a bad start when it was cancelled at Carlisle with a suspected flat spot on one of its wheels, a problem caused by excessive braking.

The Pendolino trains have been running through South Lakeland for some time but, until this week's new timetable came in, they were not able to run at higher speeds.

However, the 125mph Pendolinos will have to stick to 110mph between Crewe and Glasgow because that is the speed limit until December next year.

The benefits to train travellers to and from South Lakeland remained dubious. The fastest train northbound, the 10.30 from London, did the journey to Oxenholme in two hours 56 minutes but with the new timetable it takes three hours 12 minutes.

Southbound, the quickest train was the 15.30 which is now four minutes slower.

The main line changes have had knock-on effects for the Lakes Line between Oxenholme and Windermere.

Departures in both directions have been shunted about half-an-hour round the clock.

Mr Thompson said the new timetable got off to a bad start on the first day - all the trains arriving in Windermere being late.

A further confusion brought about by the new timetable was the train listings on the boards at Oxenholme station, which stated there were no trains to Euston at weekends from the end of October.

No one from Network Rail was available to explain as The Westmorland Gazette went to press.