Passengers accuse East Midlands Railway of ‘dereliction of duty’ after day of chaos at Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough

East Midlands Railway bosses are under fire from passengers after delays and cancellations to trains from Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough all day on Wednesday (August 18).

Travellers were told all lines were opened at 8.18am after a person was sadly hit by a train.

Yet Connect 360 services from Corby calling at Wellingborough were scrapped and Intercity trains between Kettering and St Pancras International reduced to two an hour.

Those that did manage to make journeys were then stranded in London as torrential rain led to flooding.

One frustrated passenger tweeted: “Complete dereliction of duty to your Connect customers. Why do you stop running an efficient commuter service at the earliest opportunity?

“I can’t understand why, yet again you abandon your customers travelling? You should be able to run more than one train an hour eight hours after an incident.”

Another posted: “You encounter a problem and just give up for the whole day. No information, no announcements and an awful service - with absolutely no effort to get back to normal.”

East Midlands Railway issued a string of apologies on social media.

But when approached by this newspaper for a fuller explanation, a spokesman said: “Disruption lasted significantly longer due to congestion from the knock-on effect of the morning's incident and then there was further staff and unit displacement throughout the day, meaning we were unable to return to a normal service.”

Tweets from EMR promised Intercity trains would make extra stops at Wellingborough. But the firm’s website advised passengers to travel to Bedford for a bus connection.

Many passengers claimed they had to make their own way home from Northampton after East Midlands Railway staff directed them to travel via London Euston.

Shuttle buses also connected Corby with Kettering.

Problems started at around 6.30am following reports of a person hit by train.

At 8.18am EMR tweeted: “The line is now open with delays between London and Luton. Our priority will be to get trains running to the advertised times again.”

Yet an update at 3pm then added: “Due to the ongoing disruption from this morning we are unable to run our Connect Services and we have ongoing delays and alterations on our Mainline Intercity services.”

Just over an hour later, Network Rail shut down high-level platforms at St Pancras over safety concerns when rain began pouring through a leaky roof on to the concourse.

East Midlands Railway used West Hampstead as an emergency terminus for those trains that were running but passengers sent Twitter into meltdown over the confusion.

One exasperated ticket-holder tweeted: “What’s going on? You sent people to Hampstead and abandoned them there."

Another posted: “Can you send someone to West Hempstead to explain to the massive number of passengers her how to get home? Your staff have sent us here, there’s no further instruction.”

And one said: “Absolute shambles today at St Pancras. Now sat in the rain at West Hampstead with no information whatsoever.”