Thousands of passengers travelling on the West Coast Main Line between Birmingham and London, one of the UK’s busiest rail routes, are facing disruption caused by a landslip near Rugby.
Both lines have been closed since Monday night and are set to open again on Tuesday afternoon as repair works on the landslip continue. Passengers are facing several hour delays to their journeys, with services on Avanti West Coast and London Northwestern Railway (LNR) affected.
Network Rail has advised passengers to use replacement services in the meantime. LNR services between Birmingham and Euston will run between Birmingham-Coventry and Northampton-London Euston only, with half-hourly rail replacement transport running between Coventry and Northampton.
Avanti West Coast passengers can use their tickets on LNR trains on any reasonable routes, and on CrossCountry Trains between Coventry and Stafford. Tickets will also be accepted on Chiltern Trains between Birmingham Moor Street and London Marylebone.
Phil Barnes, operations director for Network Rail, said: “Network Rail engineers have been removing vegetation from the embankment to allow better assessment of the landslip near Rugby.
“A plan is now in place to remove soil before checking the track to allow services to run. To do this safely, we are closing both lines overnight on Monday (12 February) and Tuesday (13 February) morning. We are working to reopen both lines on Tuesday afternoon. “
“Our team is working around the clock to get trains running again as soon as we can, and we are sorry for the disruption to journeys this is causing.”
Dave Whitehouse, safety and security director at Avanti West Coast, said: “The landslip between Rugby and Coventry means our services in both directions between the West Midlands and London Euston are unable to operate as normal while Network Rail complete the emergency repairs.
Throughout the day Network have been undertaking work to repair the site , the works will continue until tomorrow afternoon during this time will be continuing to work with industry partners to ensure the impact to our customers is minimised.”
Network Rail has come under fire after a string of incidents on rail services in and out of London and on the Elizabeth Line in recent months.