WALES' main rail provider, Transport for Wales, has announced widespread train cancellations "for safety reasons".

Chief operations officer, Jan-Chaudry Van Der Velde, said the firm had to run "enhanced maintenance routines", meaning there would be a shortage of available trains.

It means "no services will run to and from Newport and Crosskeys", the firm said, adding that some bus services would accept tickets for this route.

"Ticket acceptance has been agreed with Stagecoach Wales to convey our passengers between Newport and Crosskeys by any reasonable route," the firm said today, Friday.

Also, any services running from Wales to Birmingham International will instead start and terminate at Wolverhampton.

For people travelling to West Wales, trains will terminate at Carmarthen, excluding Pembroke Dock services.

Mr Van Der Velde said: "Safety is our number one priority for both our customers and our colleagues.

"We’ve had to take some of our Class 175 trains out of service while we run some enhanced maintenance routines on them for safety reasons.

"Now this is going to leave us a little bit short of rolling stock for a few days while we put all the trains through this enhanced maintenance, but as the trains go through the programme they’ll return to passenger service and so the rolling stock situation will gradually get better over the next few days.

"So, for the next few days what we’re asking passengers to do is bear with us and just check on our website or on journey check on the national website just to make sure your train is running as normal."