Five days after heatwave meltdown... misery goes on for thousands of commuters

Tens of thousands of rail commuters suffered further delays and cancellations today as services to London were still recovering from a cable meltdown.

The disruption was compounded by a staff shortage on some alternative routes used by workers whose regular services were hit after overhead power lines melted in last week’s record heat.

Thameslink services were again cancelled and delayed.

Travellers who had been advised to use alternative Great Northern services into London were told of cancelled and late trains because there were not enough staff to run them.

The cables came down on the Midland Main Line — also used by Thameslink — between St Pancras and Bedford.

Network Rail (NR) engineers again worked through the night restoring the cables but by the morning peak there were still cancellations and delays to the through-London service, one of the busiest in the UK, carrying 150,000 passengers a day on various routes serving Brighton, Littlehampton, Bedford, Peterborough and Cambridge.

Tom Moran, managing director of Thameslink and Great Northern, said: "We had minor disruption early in the morning today, but services were back on track and returning to normal by 6am. I am pleased to confirm we are now back to running our full timetable and would like to apologise to all customers for the disruption and thank them for their patience. I would urge anyone affected to make sure they claim compensation."

Just before 9am, NR said: “All lines have now fully reopened on the Midland Main Line following last week’s damage to overhead wires after final repairs were carried out through the night.

“We’d like to thank passengers for bearing with us while we carried out this essential work.

“However, although the lines reopened it still takes some while for a full train timetable to return.”

Because of the continuing problems on Thameslink, tickets were still being accepted on Southern, Great Northern, East Midlands Trains, South Western Railway, Southeastern and London Underground on “reasonable” alternative routes.

But there were more problems for commuters using Great Northern on services to and from Moorgate and King’s Cross because of a staff shortage. Disruption was expected to last all day, hitting journeys home this evening.

Both Thameslink and Great Northern are owned by GTR, which also runs the Gatwick Express and Southern. The operator has been condemned for a number of failures with calls for it to be stripped of its franchise. A spokesman said: “Some train services running across the Great Northern network will be affected by a short-term unavailability of train crew today.”