London travel chaos: Rail services disrupted during rush hour at Paddington after train derails leaving reduced service between Reading and London
Disruption to train services in and out of Paddington Station is expected to continue during evening rush hour today, after a train derailed last night.
A non-passenger train derailed and caused damage to signalling and overhead wires last night, according to Great Western Railway (GRW).
The station issued a picture of the damage in a tweet:
https://twitter.com/NetworkRailPAD/status/743673789548945408
Network Rail has announced that it will not be removing the derailed train until 10pm tonight so as to ensure maximum capacity for the peak evening travel time.
Now NOT going to remove the derailed train at Paddington until 2200 tonight as we need to ensure maximum capacity for evening peak.
— Network Rail Western (@networkrailwest) June 17, 2016
No Heathrow Connect Service is running as a result of the accident, while Heathrow Express services have been reduced to running every 30 minutes.
Passengers looking to travel between Reading and Waterloo have been advised to make their journeys via Guildford or Basingstoke instead.
Network Rail also warned that services are expected to be "very busy" today as the Royal Ascot races are taking place, and South West Trains said there were delays to trains through Ascot because of crowding arising out of the Paddington issues.
#DisruptionSWT Delays to trains through #Ascot because of Ascot races and disruption to @GWRHelp services from Paddington causing crowding.
— SWR Help (@SW_Help) June 17, 2016
GRW issued the following travel advice on Twitter:
Reduced service to/from Paddington because of a derailed train. Visit https://t.co/nWtsIovC6n to check your journey. pic.twitter.com/CDHBare4hk
— GWR (@GWRHelp) June 17, 2016