Thousands face further delays and cancellations on East Coast Main Line

THOUSANDS OF passengers and commuters are facing further travel chaos after problems with overhead cables continued for a third day.

• Problems on the East Coast Main Line between Stevenage and Hitchin have led to delays for a third day

• Services from the north are terminating at Peterborough

• Travelling today? Keep up to date on the disruption at eastcoast.co.uk and National Rail

East Coast confirmed that problems on the line between Stevenage and Hitchin were the cause of the disruption, with Network Rail adding that their engineers were on site working to fix the problems.

Repair work had been carried out on Monday afternoon, with engineers believing the problem would be sorted by 7am on Tuesday. However, it was discovered that the problem was more serious than initially thought, after the first train ran on Tuesday morning.

East Coast admitted there was ‘no estimate’ for when normal service will be resumed on the line.

The problem is being attributed to damage to 14 “droppers” - part of the overhead cabling - that are causing damage to passing trains, but it is unclear what caused the damage.

Services to and from Kings Cross have been severely delayed or cancelled after the damage on the line that links London with Edinburgh, with services terminating at Peterborough.

Train companies including East Coast, Grand Central and First Hull Trains are starting and terminating services at Peterborough but are not running between there and Kings Cross.

First Capital Connect are running a shuttle train service between Letchworth Garden City and Cambridge, Biggleswade and Peterborough and Welwyn Garden City and Kings Cross.

Replacement bus services are being used between Stevenage and Luton and Hertford North.

Passengers are being advised to keep any eye on Twitter for more information, and can get answers to any queries by using the hashtag #hitchin.

Twitter links

• @NRE_EastCoast

• @eastcoastuk