RESIDENTS have walked out of a meeting with Network Rail which they called a “waste of time”.

More than 250 people packed out the parish church hall in Grove on Tuesday night expecting to learn how Network Rail will manage a six-month closure of the A338 at Grove next year.

Instead, the company was unable to say how long the road will be closed for, when the closure will begin or where traffic will be diverted.

Grove resident John Blair, 70, said at the meeting: “They have wasted residents’ time by coming out so unprepared that they have alienated themselves and got everyone antagonised.”

Network Rail needs to close the road in order to raise the station road bridge at the Volunteer pub by 1.3 metres in order to install electric overhead wires on the train line beneath.

The work is part of the firm’s £1bn electrification of the Great Western Main Line.

Network Rail spokesman Richard Turner said: “We are still working on the logistics with Oxfordshire County Council.”

Grove Parish Council called the meeting after Network Rail applied to Oxfordshire County Council to close the bridge for six months from February 10.

However, the county’s commercial services manager Yim Kong promised residents that the closure would not begin as early as February 10.

The meeting ended with Grove Parish Council leader Frank Parnell promising there would be another public meeting giving residents more details.