Media centre

Monday 9 Dec 2024

Passengers urged to check before they travel on West Coast Main Line as emergency repairs continue

Region & Route:

North West & Central

Ongoing emergency work to complete repairs to overhead line equipment on the West Coast Main Line in Warwickshire, following damage caused by Storm Darragh, means some early morning services between London and Scotland will take longer or be cancelled.

Passengers wishing to travel north and south-bound are being urged to check before they travel with nationalrailco.uk as all available services will be diverted via Birmingham while Network Rail engineers complete critical safety works to overhead line equipment at Polesworth. Engineers are on-site and working to safely reopen the line as soon as possible

Due to Network Rail engineers being required to attend multiple incidents to remove debris and make repairs to infrastructure along the route as a result of Storm Darragh, emergency repairs at Polesworth has been affected.

Chris Baughan, Network Rail’s West Coast South route operations manager, said: “Storm Darragh has wreaked havoc on the railway this weekend and we are very sorry to passengers for the disruption to train services this morning on the West Coast Main Line as frontline teams continue with emergency repairs and the clean-up.

“Our engineers are working as fast as we can to stabilise a critical piece of the overhead line equipment in Polesworth. We are asking passengers to check before they travel as some morning journeys between London, the West Midlands, the North West and Scotland may take longer or have altered timetables.”

Storm Darragh has brought many challenges across the rail network this weekend from flooding in Cheshire, as well as debris and fallen down trees many of which are from third party land.

Passengers across the network are being asked to check their entire journeys at nationalrail.co.uk before setting out as storm-damaged infrastructure is causing disruption in other parts of the network, including between Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford. Some long distance services make take 45 minutes longer and some journeys may be bus replacement services.