TENS of thousands of rail passengers have been disrupted by a series of overhead line failures.
The most serious incident involved a Great Western Railway service at 1830 on December 7, when thousands of passengers climbed down from stranded trains onto the tracks.
And services on the East Coast Main Line were cancelled for several days following an incident near Grantham on December 10.
In the December 7 incident, a GWR service “struck debris” on the Down Main from Paddington at Ladbroke Grove in west London, with overhead lines hanging beside the train.
Network Rail and GWR both described the cause being a train “striking an obstruction”.
The incident left the GWR service and four Elizabeth line and two Heathrow Express trains stranded.
Most of the 4,000 passengers on the trains were evacuated onto the track, where they walked to safety.
Passengers were stuck on trains for up to four hours, with heating and lighting turned off. As Class 345 Elizabeth line trains do not have toilets, some passengers self-disembarked onto the tracks to relieve themselves.
Passenger Irene Phfung said via X (formerly Twitter): “Power off, all dark. I got a newborn with me. A lady fainted. We’re on the way to the airport to go back home for Christmas. Missing a flight first time in my life.”
Commuter Mikey Worrall described the train as “lurching to a stop”. He told the BBC: “We saw a couple of workers come past, and they were trying to keep everyone calm. Suddenly we saw a stream of people coming down the track, and at that point it was clear that we would be getting off.
Drivers’ union ASLEF said a manager drafted in to cover during strike action was driving the GWR train involved in the incident. The union said the driver usually worked as an operations investigations manager.
Assistant General Secretary Simon Weller told LBC Radio: “The manager involved was an operations investigation manager whose competency is basically three hours a month. So they would be driving these express trains out on the main line and we would say their competencies aren’t fit for purpose.”
GWR said: “The only people who can drive our trains are competent train drivers with route knowledge. This would include train driving instructors.”
It also said the crew were “not at fault for the incident”.
Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines was on board one of the stranded trains. In a message to staff, he wrote that the railways had “gone backwards on customer service”.
Haines said: “For once I had the pain of experiencing it first hand, both as a customer and as a colleague looking to support others in a testing circumstance.
“It wasn’t pleasant, and I had the benefit of being with
