Engineers work through the night to sort out West Coast Mainline
Rail engineers were working through the night tonight to try to prevent another day of travel chaos on a major line.
Passengers on the West Coast Main Line between London and Scotland have suffered six successive days of turmoil after a series of setbacks following a recent £9 billion upgrade.
The latest incident involved a problem with overhead power cables and meant neither Virgin Trains nor London Midland could run any services in or out of London’s Euston station during this morning’s rush-hour.
A Network Rail (NR) spokesman said tonight: “Engineers took possession of the line at 9.30pm and we are expecting to have a full or near full service tomorrow.
“We aim to start as usual in the morning and provide the right level of service for the morning rush hour.”
Limited services were resumed during the day but ended earlier than usual to allow the engineers to begin work restoring the cables which were damaged yesterday night at Kenton, near Wembley.
The damage added hours to journey times as disgruntled passengers were forced to use alternative routes.
Late-travelling Virgin passengers were redirected to St Pancras for trains to Luton Airport Parkway where coaches were running to Milton Keynes.
Some passengers were sent to Marylebone for trains to Birmingham.
And London Midland and Overground passengers were forced to catch buses from Euston to Watford.
NR is under huge pressure to ensure services are up and running as soon as possible.
The latest problem followed overhead cable problems at Bletchley in Buckinghamshire and at Rugby in Warwickshire which hit services yesterday.
Before that, West Coast services on Sunday and Monday had been affected by overhead cable problems at Watford in Hertfordshire and the line had been shut for a period after a light plane had crashed close to the tracks near Stafford on Friday in an accident which claimed three lives.
Virgin called on NR to check whether there was “an underlying issue” with the power supply.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) estimated that the disruption on the line had cost business around £38 million over the last three days.
It also said it thought the recent disruptions had occurred because the West Coast upgrade had been “rushed” so it could be completed by the end of 2008.
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said: “If there is any truth in the claim that disruptions have been caused by rushed work by Network Rail this would be a serious problem.
“Rail passengers need to be assured that the work NR did well to complete by the December 2008 deadline has been done to the highest possible standard.”
Share
