Passengers to suffer delays throughout the day following disruption caused by signalling outage near Luton

Trains between Bedford and London that were delayed by a major signalling outage near Luton will not be running as normal until 3pm as the line suffers the knock-on effects of the problem.

National Rail’s 9am update said it would take until 3pm for a good service to resume on all routes.

Trains between London St Pancras and Bedford were unable to run for approximately 1 hour this morning causing knock-on delays throughout the service.

As train crew and trains are out of place, delays of up to 60 minutes to journeys on the East Midlands route are expected, while passengers travelling on the Thameslink services between Bedford and London should brace themselves 45 minute-delays.

Bus replacement services are at the ready from 9am for routes between Bedford, Luton, Luton Airport Parkway and St Albans.

Compensation for those delayed by half an hour or more can be claimed on the East Midlands website.

Passengers understandably were not impressed. Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman tweeted:

Business as usual @TLRailUK @GTRailUK #railchaos #railplan2020 pic.twitter.com/MyJdDJdRG5— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) June 21, 2018

Absolute chaos at St Albans and no communication. @TLRailUK how do you continuously get away with it? Absolute shambles of an organisation #thameslink #stalbans pic.twitter.com/BgqY8Sos4z— Natalie (@nataliemaria26) June 21, 2018

Absolute meltdown at St Albans City station, hundereds of people waiting on the roads outsite hoping to access the station. No trains into London seem to be running, Thameslink continue their recently useless service #Thameslink #SAC #NationalRail— Matthew Bennett (@Grogar) June 21, 2018

A sea of stranded people as #EastMidlands line sees a major failure on signals between Bedford and London. Some hope as the later trains look to be showing, or is this optimism at its best! pic.twitter.com/dn7fTfOBMz— Matthew O’Connor (@yourlikethis) June 21, 2018