Rail Service into Waterloo Disrupted

Reports now show that services into London’s Waterloo station were disrupted yesterday. Apparently, tens of thousands of rail passengers had to deal with travel problems after another cable theft took place. Not only that, but a cracked rail also added to the travel chaos. Unfortunately, this all took place on one of the country’s busiest routes.

Anyone who uses services into Waterloo station knows just how busy these services can get. In fact, these routes are used by some 250,000 passengers everyday. When these two early-morning incidents took place, experts knew right away there would be heavily delays.

The first incident was a cable theft in the Basingstoke area. This knocked out signalling controls for a few hours while engineers attempted a mending job. While this was going on, a hairline crack in a rail near Vauxhall (just outside Waterloo) was spotted. The crack was in one of the central lines into the central London mainline station.

A spokesman for Network Rail said, because of the very congested nature of the tracks in this area, engineers are unable to make repairs until overnight. This means the cracked line would have to be out for the rest of the day. This will of course lead to some cancellations. Passengers are advised to check the South West Trains website for more details on this matter.

A spokesman for South West Trains said that they are extremely frustrated that their passengers’ journeys are being disrupted yet again. The company is very sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused people. Network Rail engineers are working around the clock to get this problem repaired as quickly as possible. Consumers will be updated with progress as it happens.

The best thing the train operator was able to do for consumers was to offer alternative service arrangements. This did include shuttle services between Woking and Alton, Shepperton and Kingston, and Surbiton and Hampton Court.

Cable theft has been a widespread problem in Britain lately. A number of people are going around and stealing the copper cabling used in rails. After stealing this cabling, they take it off to sell it. Right now copper is pretty expensive, and thus these thieves are getting a good deal on it. The British Transport Police have already launched a series of campaigns to tackle this problem. Most of these campaigns include raiding the scrap metal merchants who pay these thieves for the cabling.

The main goal for the rail industry right now has to be stopping cable theft. Cracks in rail lines are going to happen from time to time. This goes double for extremely busy routes. However, the cable theft is something that the industry should not have to deal with. Every time a cable theft takes place, it is costing the industry even more money. This will eventually lead to ticket price increases.