THURROCK rail commuters have had to endure another day of travel woes on the C2C line back and forth from Fenchurch Street.
It seems that we are in our third day of signalling problems.
A host of trains have been cancelled today and C2C are advising commuters to go onto the Liverpool Street link.
C2C issued a written apology on their website
Dear Customer,
The signalling problems near West Ham that have caused severe disruption to your services over the last three days (9th – 11th September) are still continuing. Although engineers have been working through the last three days and nights and have checked and changed many parts we are still not certain that we have found the root cause.
We really are very sorry indeed for what has happened. It is totally unacceptable for this to have lasted as long as it has and we know how hugely disruptive it has been for you.
Part of the signalling system that tracks the location of trains – called a track circuit – has failed repeatedly over two sections close to Bromley-by-Bow. This started on 9th September in the evening peak. Network Rail engineers worked through the night of 9th/ 10th to try to find the cause, replacing a number of components and cabling. It appeared the faults were fixed in time for the morning peak of 10th September. But since then the faults have recurred, yesterday 10th Sept and then again today, 11th Sept.
The effect each time this occurs is that services are reduced to very low speeds. This severely restricts the number of trains we can operate into London as the reduced speed quickly leads to a big backlog of services.
Network Rail engineers have continued to work through the day and night and we brought in extra teams last night, 10/11th September, to add to those already deployed. These included experts from other parts of Network Rail with specialist knowledge. Despite many hours of work we have not yet found the cause but we will continue to do everything we can to fix the problem.
Once again, we are truly sorry for the delays and disruption to your journeys. Please accept our unreserved apology.
Richard Schofield Julian Drury
Route Managing Director, Managing Director
Network Rail c2c Rail
