Rail misery as signals go down
There was misery for hundreds of rail passengers as a signal failure led to cancelled services on Saturday.
Passengers heading south were forced to disembark at Leicester Station and waited in long queues for coaches.
The problems started at midday and affected services to London and to Birmingham.
It was fixed by 3pm but knock-on delays continued all day.
Inside the crowded station at lunchtime on Saturday the departure boards showed all trains were either delayed or cancelled, while announcements regularly heralded more bad news.
Outside, transport police battled to keep the massive queue for the replacement bus services from spilling on to London Road, while station staff with a megaphone tried to get people on to the right coaches.
Among 200 or so people on the pavement outside the station on Saturday afternoon was Joe Hardy, 60, from Derby, who was queuing for a replacement bus to Bedford.
He said: "I'm trying to get to London and was meant to get in an hour ago. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get on a bus."
Paul Stanyon, 52, from Luton, had been hoping to watch his home team play an away match against Hinckley United.
He said: "I was trying to get to Hinckley for a game but I got stranded here in Leicester.
"The football match got called off anyway, so I'm heading home again. I don't know how long it'll take, though."
An East Midlands Trains spokeswoman said: "We've been unable to run trains to London and the problem has been out of our hands.
A Network Rail spokeswoman said: "We apologise for the problems."
3 Comments
by Neil0123
Monday, January 16 2012, 6:47PM
“It wasn't theft, as trains were definite running until 11am - I saw some of them go past.
The trouble was that no-one at the station seemed to have a clue what was happening nor what anyone was going to do about it. The advice they gave was conflicting and didn't match up with reality.
Given the number of chaotic delays on the railways then you would have thought that they would have been experienced in dealing with this sort of problem - but they weren't.
If they fixed the fault at 3pm then why were the trains STILL not running at 6pm?
This is supposed to be the network connecting the Loughborough Olympic base with the Games in a few months time. They will make the UK look a laughing stock if they continue to act in this hapless way.”
by sydney11
Monday, January 16 2012, 6:44PM
“So this is similar to the time it took us 7 hours to get back to Cardiff, having been abandond by the bus at Nuneaton - (thank you for the poor lonely sole working on Nuneaton Station, who kindly provided us with a letter, other wise we would have had to pay again at Birimingham as we missed the train we had tickets for)”
by DonHenson
Monday, January 16 2012, 5:54PM
“So what caused the signals to go down? The wrong kind of frost, or theft?
The scenes at the station were absolutely chaotic when I arrived to catch a train - I had the good sense to decide there was no pressing urgency to travel and went home instead.”