RAIL travellers heading to and from London faced a day of frustration and delays today after engineering work seriously over-ran.Network Rail engineers closed a section of the track between Stratford and Maryland stations over the long weekend to update the line and make changes in advance of work on the nearby Olympic site and Eurostar link.

RAIL travellers heading to and from London faced a day of frustration and delays today after engineering work seriously over-ran.

Network Rail engineers closed a section of the track between Stratford and Maryland stations over the long weekend to update the line and make changes in advance of work on the nearby Olympic site and Eurostar link.

However the work was not completed as planned by the early hours of this morning, and engineers were expecting to remain on site until early afternoon today.

That meant not all the tracks on one of the busiest stretches of line in the country could be opened in time for the rush-hour.

Thousands of commuters travelling between Ipswich and other Suffolk stations to London faced delays.

Trains between Ipswich and London suffered serious delays, in some cases of more than 30 minutes, while many commuter services to stations in Essex were cancelled altogether - meaning longer-distance trains had more stops and were more crowded than normal.

A spokeswoman for rail operator 'one' said: “This is outside our control, but we realise it is very difficult for our passengers and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience.

“We hope to have things back to normal by lunchtime, although the engineering work is not expected to finish until at least 2pm.”

A spokeswoman for Network Rail said the reason for the delay to the engineering work was under investigation, but the priority was to get the line up and running properly as soon as possible.