Planning to travel into London by train over the May bank holiday weekend? You will need to take major disruption into account first.

Network Rail is carrying out a programme of work, meaning checking before you travel is even more vital than usual.

London Bridge work, which is part of the £6.5bn Thameslink programme, means there will be no trains to Charing Cross or Waterloo East from May to 4.

Cannon Street and London Bridge’s high-level platforms (numbers 1-3) will also be closed to trains on the Saturday and Sunday.

Southeastern is diverting some trains to Victoria and Blackfriars, some services will end at New Cross and it will also be running an amended high-speed service to St Pancras International.

Liverpool Street station will be particularly badly hit over the bank holiday weekend, with services starting and finishing at Ingatestone in Essex on May 3 and 4.

Two of the four lines between Slough and Paddington will be closed over the weekend while there will be an amended timetable for trains using Waterloo.

Alasdair Coates, Network Rail route managing director for the south east, said: “We have a huge investment programme across the south east this year to improve the reliability of this busy railway for the millions of passengers who use it every week.

“We do as much work as we can overnight but for some major schemes it is only possible to achieve the massive scale of work by closing the railway during the day.

“We would like to thank passengers in advance for bearing with us as it will mean some changes to their travel plans.”

Network Rail will have a team of 14,000 working on the bank holiday engineering programme.

It says work is timed to minimise disruption to passengers, as over a bank holiday weekend passenger numbers can drop by 20 per cent to 30 per cent.

David Statham, managing director of Southeastern, said: "Network Rail is undertaking significant improvement work across our network during the bank holiday weekend, which will affect our passengers travelling across Kent and into London. We encourage people to check before they travel and leave more time for their journey if necessary."

There will be more work taking place on the second May bank holiday.