Network Rail closes stretches of line for engineering work, mostly overnight and at weekends, planned weeks ahead. A train that meets one is diverted where there's another way round, or replaced by buses for the stretch; you're told in the bell a week before, and Network Rail pays Schedule 4 compensation. Tomorrow's check on Diagrams lists the ones that hit tomorrow's workings.

The days the railway runs differently. Bank holidays and Boxing Day run the Sunday timetable, as most of the railway does - your Sunday workings run, your weekday ones don't - and nothing runs on Christmas Day. In the school holidays fewer people commute and more travel for leisure.

Cup finals, internationals, concerts, race meetings and festivals bring crowds onto the trains to the venue's stations, and home again after - on top of the ordinary passengers, from the places the crowd comes from (a festival draws from all over the country, a local match from nearby). The Saturdays before Christmas fill the trains into the cities. The evening before, each company whose trains call at a venue is told; add trains or longer formations to carry the crowd.