RAIL passengers will soon benefit from extra and longer trains as part of efforts to ease overcrowding between Oxfordshire and London’s Paddington station.

In August last year, the Department for Transport revealed that the 10 most overcrowded commuter trains around London were all First Great Western services running to or from Paddington, including four which begin or end their journeys at Oxford.

Last October, a deal was reached to provide 48 more coaches for FGW’s Thames Valley services.

Extra coaches in High Speed Trains and the transfer of Turbo trains displaced by the return to FGW’s fleet of five Class 180 Adelante trains will allow the firm to provide another 4,500 seats on rush-hour services.

The trains will be phased into service between this month and September, once overhauls and conversion work are completed.

Two busy services to benefit will be the 7.15am from Didcot Parkway to Paddington - which has replaced the former 07.09am service from Oxford, one of the trains on the DfT list - and the 5.22pm from London to Hereford, via Oxford, which will both see the seven-coach HSTs currently used replaced by high-capacity eight-coach HSTs, offering about 80 extra seats on each train.