Travellers suffer in storm's wake

12 April 2012

Rail and plane passengers continued to suffer as services struggled to return to normal following Thursday's storms.

British Airways cancelled 34 incoming flights to Heathrow and Gatwick airports and the two main London to Scotland rail routes ran much-reduced services.

But there was better news for Eurostar passengers, with the Channel Tunnel high-speed train company able to run a full service, except for one early Paris to London train which was cancelled. Severe weather in northern France had led to a suspension of Eurostar's London to Paris and Brussels services in the second half of Thursday.

A severely-reduced service was operating on GNER's East Coast main line between London and Edinburgh while an emergency timetable was in operation on the Virgin West Coast main line. GNER spokesman Alan Hyde said: "We have been working hard to ensure that our trains and crews are in the right places to run as normal a service as possible."

The Stansted Express was operating every half-hour and Silverlink cancelled all services between Watford and St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.

On Arriva Trains Wales' route between Llandudno Juction and Blaenau Ffestiniog, the line was closed due to flooding. Merseyrail put on bus replacement services between Hooton and Chester because of problems caused yesterday by high winds at Chester station.

The One train company suspended services all day to and from Enfield Town station in north London and to and from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire.

A spokesman for the Highways Agency said there were no major problems on the roads and everything had been cleared following the storms.

London Bridge railway station has re-opened after being closed when part of the station forecourt roof collapsed. South Eastern Trains reported a series of delays and cancellations to services between London Bridge and Kent stations.

Conditions at Manchester airport were much improved, with just three flights cancelled. On Thursday the airport was shut to incoming flights between 3pm and 5pm and 80 flights had to be cancelled or diverted to other airports. Gatwick and Stansted airports reported that services were operating normally.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in