Hooligans cause rail chaos
P2 leadBy PAUL GEATER paul.geater@ecng.co.ukVANDALISM overnight threw the region's local rail services into chaos today.Trains on branch lines from Ipswich to Felixstowe, Woodbridge, and Lowestoft were cancelled and replaced by buses – or ran nearly an hour late.
P2 lead
By PAUL GEATER
paul.geater@ecng.co.uk
VANDALISM overnight threw the region's local rail services into chaos today.
Trains on branch lines from Ipswich to Felixstowe, Woodbridge, and Lowestoft were cancelled and replaced by buses – or ran nearly an hour late.
Vandals left objects on the track at East Suffolk Junction, near the Hadleigh Road bridge in Ipswich overnight and these damaged the undercarriage of a train made of local units travelling from Ipswich to Norwich for overnight maintenance.
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The units were all badly damaged and could not be repaired in time for the start of today's services.
Buses replaced the services to Felixstowe until the late morning.
A London Crosslink service was cancelled so its InterCity Turbostar unit could help on local services, but most mainline trains to London were not affected.
"This has caused us serious problems," said Anglia Railways' Peter Meades.
"We already had some of our units out of action for planned routine maintenance in Norwich – but we still had enough to cover our services.
"But when these were damaged in this vandalism attack we didn't have any more to fall back on."
The company was hoping that the trains could be repaired and be back in service by this evening's rush hour.
