Media centre

Friday 17 Jun 2005

‘APPALLING’ ACT OF VANDALISM CAUSES TRAIN DELAYS

Region & Route:

Eastern: Anglia

| Eastern

Train services on the main line between London Liverpool Street and Norwich have been substantially reduced this morning after vandals cut through signalling and communication cables in two separate locations in Newton Flotman, just south of Norwich. The act of vandalism, which has caused delays to thousands of commuters this morning, is the subject of a police investigation.  Network Rail technicians have been working through the night to identify the location of the damage and make the necessary repairs, while signallers have had to use manual signalling methods to keep trains on the move.    Jon Wiseman, Network Rail Route Director, said: “It appears that somebody has committed this appalling act of vandalism with the deliberate aim of causing as much disruption to train services as possible.  The incident is now in the hands of the police and we are working extremely hard to repair the damage and get trains back to a normal service.” In order to minimise disruption, ‘one’ is running an hourly off-peak service between Norwich and London with departures on the hour from Norwich and on the half-hour from London.  An additional shuttle service is running between Ipswich and Colchester  Local services in the Norwich area are also being disrupted with delays of up to 30 minutes on all services. Mark Phillips, Operations & Planning Director for ‘one’ commented: “It is of extreme concern to us that an act of such wanton and premeditated vandalism has been carried out. I am sorry that the vandals’ action has disrupted train journeys for thousands of our passengers - we are working with Network Rail and the British Transport Police to ensure that everything possible is being done to identify those responsible.” Network Rail and ‘one’ are hoping to restore a normal train service later today.