One of Britain’s busiest rail stations is at a standstill after damage to overhead line equipment.
No trains are running in or out of LondonPaddington station, which handles over 100,000 passengers on the average weekday. Some services may resume at around noon, but there will be severe disruption all day.
The lines to and from the terminus are completely blocked at Hanwell, a suburban station between Ealing and Slough.
Problems began on Tuesday evening, and repairs are not expected to be completed until late on Wednesday
Paddington is the London hub for Great Western Railway trains from the Thames Valley, the West of England and South Wales. It also serves Heathrow Airport with Transport for London and Heathrow Express trains, which together normally offer six trains an hour.
Commuters are being advised to use Underground services for shorter journeys where possible. Longer-distance commuters can use their tickets on the line between Reading and London Waterloo or the Chiltern line to London Marylebone. But journeys will be much slower than normal, and alternative trains are likely to be extremely crowded.
InterCity travellers can use the Waterloo-Reading link to connect with trains to Bath, Bristol, Devon, Cornwall, Cardiff and Swansea, but normal services will be halved. Passengers to Worcester and Malvern are being advised to travel via Birmingham.
Some rail-replacement buses are operating between Paddington and Heathrow, though airline passengers are being advised to use the London Underground, taking up to four times as long. Some travellers who arrive short of time and discover the trains are not running are taking taxis instead.
Many airport and airline staff rely on trains to get to work at Heathrow, which could pose operational problems for Britain’s busiest airport.
An online statement read: “Yesterday evening the overhead electric wires near Ealing Broadway were severely damaged. As a result of this, trains are unable to run to and from London Paddington.
“Network Rail are working to recover all the stranded trains and to rectify the damage to the overhead electric wires. Network Rail expect to reopen two of the four lines from midday.
“However trains will remain disrupted until the end of the day.”
While most commuter services are electric, long-distance services can run on diesel. But they are unable to operate at present because the lines are blocked.
Commuters faced similar problems at central London's Victoria station on Tuesday evening after Southeastern services were hit by a separate power failure.
A statement from Southeastern Railway said reports of a "power supply issue from the electrical control room that serves all routes to and from Victoria" caused the signalling system to "revert signals to Red (For safety reasons) and the tracking system to fail".
