Broken rail and signal failure causes disruption

The problems began with series of track circuit failures in the area around the broken rail at approximately 4.40am on Tuesday morning.

This disrupted Southern and Southeastern services for a period of around five hours although a spokesman for Southern said at this time it was "not known that a rail was broken", adding:

"Network Rail engineers could not find fault with the signalling systems as such and set out to do a manual inspection of the track.

"They found the broken rail at approximately 10.00am. It's important to note that people were not in danger as trains were moving very slowly (max 5 mph) between the signals where the problem was apparent."

The broken rail was found approximately 250 yards inside the Bo Peep tunnel near St Leonard's Warrior Square station.

A temporary repair commenced at around 12.25pm when the rail was clamped.

Rail replacement buses ran between Bexhill and Hastings.

At approximately 15.00 trains started running again at a maximum speed of 20 mph over the clamped rail.

The permanent repair was made to the rail overnight after services had ceased for the day.

On the same day trains ground to a halt when a major signal failure occurred in the Croydon area at 14.15.

Because of the severity of the failure, Southern was unable to run any trains north of Gatwick, or any trains between Croydon and London terminals.

Rail replacement buses were arranged on the Brighton Mainline and west of Brighton and all public transport providers accepted Southern tickets on any reasonable routes between Gatwick Airport and London.

The fault was found and rectified at around 15.20.

This incident would have also impacted services coming from the East Coastway, already disrupted by the broken rail incident at Hastings.

As a result delays, cancellations and short notice alterations occurred to both Southern and Southeastern services throughout the day until the end of service.