Following the disruption to services into London Euston on Monday 14 February, London Midland has issued an apology via its website to those who were affected.
The statement reads:
“We are really sorry if you were caught up in the disruption affecting trains into London Euston on Monday morning.
“At around 0450hrs a set of points stopped working just outside Northampton station, which meant trains could not leave the depot by the normal route. The alternative involved a complicated manoeuvre that meant trains took up to 30 minutes longer to get into Northampton station.
“As a result, the 0505 and 0517 departures were delayed by around 20 minutes, and the 0542 additional service to London (which started at Rugby) was cancelled.
“At around 0650hrs, another set of points failed, preventing any movements from the depot to the station, which affected key departures to London at 0700 (22 mins late), 0713 (cancelled), 0732 (18 mins late), 0739 (81 mins late) and 0805 (cancelled).
“During this time, Network Rail engineers replaced a number of parts without success until finally identifying the fault – which related to work they had carried out over the weekend – at 0835hrs. Repairs were eventually completed at around 1100hrs.
“At Milton Keynes, we worked with Virgin to allow passengers onto a number of their trains into London, but at stations without alternative services we were very restricted, which led to crowding on several services into Euston. From Northampton, we were eventually forced to run the 0700 service non-stop to London due to the number of people already on board (the 8 carriages that are normally attached at Northampton were stranded at the depot), whilst several other departures were cancelled due to a lack of available trains.
“These situations are always difficult, although we tried to pass on the information you needed to make decisions about your travel plans as soon as we received it. This included using station announcements, our website, and our Twitter feed. The length of time it took to identify the cause of the fault obviously made this a challenge at times, so thank you for your patience.
“If you were delayed by more than 30 minutes, remember you can claim compensation under the Delay Repay scheme – details are here.”
