Bank holiday travellers are facing rail chaos as passengers are being urged not to travel to or from London Euston station.
Avanti West Coast said travellers should avoid using its services on Monday to travel to or from London Euston, one of the top 10 busiest train stations in the country.
“Due to a severe signalling failure in the Cheddington area, we are advising customers not to travel to or from London Euston,” Avanti said.
Passengers with tickets dated for Monday can use them on Tuesday instead, the company added.
All lines were briefly closed on Monday morning between Milton Keynes and Watford Junction, the vital southern half of the West Coast Main Line.
Delays for rest of day
They have since reopened, although travellers are being warned of train cancellations and delays of up to an hour for the rest of bank holiday Monday.
It comes after widespread disruption affected Euston on the Friday of the bank holiday weekend after thieves tried to steal signalling cables from the West Coast Main Line, triggering signal failures.
The problems affected passengers travelling with five separate train companies, including Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, London Northwestern Railway, Transport for Wales and West Midlands Railway.
Services on the line, the busiest mixed freight and passenger railway route in western Europe, were already set to be reduced because of planned Network Rail engineering works around Crewe and Carlisle.
Engineering work
A £24 million upgrade project is under way to refurbish drains and carry out other maintenance works intended to make the trains more reliable in the future, and less susceptible to delays and cancellations caused by track faults and failures.
Network Rail said that it often carries out major engineering work over bank holiday periods to reduce the number of passengers impacted.
King’s Cross London Underground station was forced to close on Sunday after football fans reportedly set off flares inside, setting off the fire alarm and causing huge disruption.
On the roads, transport analytics company Inrix said it expected to see 3.4 million car journeys during bank holiday Monday as sunseekers returned home from the three-day weekend.
The RAC said the best time to travel on Monday would be before 10am, with the worst time for congestion being between 11am and 2pm.
Alice Simpson, the RAC Breakdown spokesman, said: “We’re looking at possible leisure traffic volumes returning to levels similar to what we last saw in 2019 before the coronavirus outbreak, as drivers’ desire to make the most of the UK increases.”