Britain’s rail services severely disrupted as heatwave damage is repaired

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Severe disruption on Britain’s railway continued on Wednesday while engineers worked to repair the effects of an unprecedented heatwave, as Network Rail announced a new “resilience taskforce” to plan for future extreme weather.

Services were expected to return towards normal later in the day, after two days of blanket speed restrictions and mainline closures, but damage including broken overhead wires and fires that spread on to tracks was still halting many services on Wednesday morning.

The East Coast mainline remained closed between London and Peterborough after a fire on Tuesday evening, suspending LNER services out of King’s Cross, and Thameslink and Great Northern services north of the capital.

Trains around Birmingham New Street were severely disrupted due to extensive damage to overhead electric lines, with Avanti West Coast and West Midlands trains forced to divert on to alternate routes.

A number of services from London Euston were cancelled and others delayed after fires in north-west London on Tuesday.

Fewer east Midlands intercity services were running, as repairs continued on the Midlands mainline. Damage was also affecting some Northern, TransPennine, CrossCountry and Transport for Wales services.

The industry’s official National Rail website told customers to check before setting off on journeys and continued to urge people to travel only if necessary, despite the huge amount of work completed overnight.

“Network Rail teams are continuing to work tirelessly to make the repairs so we can get services back up and running for passengers but there is still disruption to services throughout the day,” it said.

Meanwhile, Network Rail announced the launch of an independent taskforce to shape how the railway can become more resilient to hot weather.

The taskforce will look at how other railways worldwide deal with extreme heat and fluctuations in temperature, and consider issues such as the changing climate, how infrastructure can be kept functioning safely, and the best way to manage operations and look after passengers in future heatwaves.

Andrew Haines, the chief executive of Network Rail, said: “The weather we’ve experienced this week has put a huge amount of pressure on our infrastructure, our staff and our passengers, and with extreme weather events becoming more frequent as our climate continues to change, we’ve got to pull out all the stops to make our railway as resilient as possible.”

The four experts on the panel are former Met Office chief scientist, Julia Slingo; the ex-HS2 chair Doug Oakervee; a former chief executive of Australian railway operators, Simon Lane, who ran trains in hot climates; and the chief executive of watchdog Transport Focus, Anthony Smith.