An apology for disruption: Wednesday 8 March

We would like to apologise to customers caught up in disruption on the c2c network yesterday.

What happened?

At approximately 14.30 on Wednesday afternoon, all signalling was lost between Barking and West Ham.

Network Rail dispatched a team of engineers to the area who then discovered deliberate damage had been caused to cables that feed the overhead lines and multiple components were damaged.

Because of the overhead lines damage and the signalling failure, no services could run on the London-bound track between Barking and West Ham until the power lines and signal failures could be repaired by Network Rail. This severely restricted the number of trains we could operate.

Arrangements were made for c2c tickets to be accepted on Greater Anglia and London Underground services to help provide alternative options for travel.

Unfortunately, the damage was so severe the disruption continued until the end of yesterday’s service and the fault was repaired by Network Rail overnight in time for this morning’s service.

Rob Mullen, Managing Director of c2c said, “We are really sorry to all of our customers who were caught up in yesterday’s disruption on the c2c route.

“We know this will have caused extensive delays to your journeys especially as it happened at the worst possible time during the afternoon and evening peak. We worked closely with our Network Rail colleagues to try and get our services up and running as quickly as possible but due to the severity of the damage, the disruption lasted until the end of our evening service, which we know will have caused issues for many of our customers.”

Compensation for delays

If you were delayed you will be eligible for compensation for your journey. Find out more about the compensation we offer, and how to claim, here.

• c2c smartcard users: You will receive automatic compensation provided you tapped your Smartcard at both the start and end of your journey. If you were not able to do so, you will have to make a manual claim for your delay. This is because our system will not have full information about your journey, so cannot calculate your automatic compensation. We recommend you check your online account to ensure our automatic payments do reflect your actual delay. If you feel they do not, you can use your online account to correct the automatic system or alternatively submit a manual claim.

Paper ticket holders, Oyster and contactless card users: Please fill out your details on this online delay repay form.