Line fault causes rail disruption

Passengers are facing a day of disruption after a fault on a power line brought trains to a halt.

First Capital Connect, which runs trains from King's Lynn to London King's Cross, said the problem would continue into the afternoon.

Network Rail said engineers found a broken power cable in the Downham Market area, which stopped trains.

Meanwhile, power has been restored to 5,000 homes in the Downham area following an unrelated power cut.

Apology for delay

Network Rail spokesman Kate Snowden said: "We had some problems with lineside trees connecting with the overhead lines and tripping out the electricity.

"Engineers attended the site and cut back the tree and fixed the line. We apologise to passengers for any delay to their service this morning."

Buses are replacing trains on the 42-mile (68 km) line between Ely and King's Lynn, but a normal train service is operating between Ely and London via Cambridge.

The bus journey is adding about an extra hour to journey times and passengers are advised to contact National Rail Inquiries before travelling.

A First Capital Connect spokesman said: "There was one train with customers on it that got stuck at Watlington.

"We had two managers on site who got some passengers up to King's Lynn and passengers that wanted to get to Ely were put on a bus, so they weren't disrupted too much.

"However, there will be a great number of customers who will be (disrupted) and we apologise for that and we are working with Network Rail to resolve that."

A spokesman for EDF Energy said it discovered a fault on its power lines at 0622 GMT which cut off 5,000 customers.

It said 150 had power restored within an hour, and the remainder were reconnected before 1100 GMT.