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Wednesday 28 Jun 2006

KING'S CROSS STATION RE-OPENS AND NORMAL SERVICE RESUMES

Region & Route:

National

King's Cross station, which had been closed since Monday lunchtime, re-opened late last night (Tuesday).  And today, train services are running as normal. The station had been closed since 11am on Monday morning, when a fire broke out in a nearby building and London Fire Brigade imposed a 200m safety cordon around the site.  This included King's Cross main line station and King's Cross signal box. Although the fire was extinguished on Monday night, gas cylinders on the site continued to present a risk, and the safety cordon remained in place until late on Tuesday night. Director of Operations & Customer Service, Robin Gisby, said: "We are pleased that this incident is now over and that the disruption caused to our passengers is at an end.  "We know that, despite the inconvenience caused, our passengers appreciate that we were unable to resume normal service until it was absolutely safe to do so. "We thank our partners, the train operating companies, for working with us to implement the fullest possible special service yesterday, and we thank London Fire Brigade for its efforts in resolving this serious situation as quickly as possible." The evacuation of the signal box meant initially that it was impossible to run any services on the East Coast Main Line south of Peterborough.  But Network Rail worked quickly to implement alternative signalling arrangements further up the route, and with the train operating companies to establish a special service.  This allowed First Capital Connect to run a service on Tuesday which consisted of six trains each hour from Finsbury Park staton.