Video: Elizabeth Line passengers exit the tracks after hours of waiting
Passengers were left stranded on trains for hours in a power outage after damage to overhead cables cut off routes to and from one of London’s busiest stations.
Network Rail said all services to and from Paddington would have to be suspended while engineers repaired overhead power cables in the Ladbroke Grove area.
The Elizabeth Line, Great Western Railway and Heathrow Express were all affected.
People are being urged to check services before traveling on Friday.
Passengers said on social media that they were trapped for hours on a cold train with no power.
Rachel Riley from Countdown was also one of those trapped on the Elizabeth Line train.
She posted a selfie of herself and the other passengers on X, all smiling and saying, “About 4 hours after boarding, we’re getting off the Elizabeth line, wow!”
BBC journalist Emma Bentley shared a photo of passengers waiting in the dark and wrote of X: “The carriage is out of power and it looks like we’ll have to walk home…”
She later added that passengers on the train were being evacuated three and a half hours after it became stranded.
image source, emma bentley
Some passengers were stranded for more than three hours between Paddington and Acton main line
Hugh Comerford, 65, said he was evacuated about three hours after trains leaving London were forced to stop.
He told the BBC that he could see workers preparing to evacuate people outside the train window, and passengers got off the train and started walking along the tracks.
“At around 6:40 p.m., the train suddenly stopped, but we weren’t sure why,” he said.
“The driver said he had to turn off the power because the train in front of him got tangled in the overhead wires.”
Comerford said temperatures were starting to get colder and not only were there no lights, but drivers were no longer able to make any further announcements through the tannoy system.
He said that despite several “obviously canceled flights”, his fellow passengers remained calm and were in a very good mood “all things considered”.
“Fortunately there don’t seem to be any young children,” he added.
Another passenger described how passengers were being taken off the train “one by one to urinate”.
Transport for London told BBC News that four Elizabeth Line trains were stranded after “another operator’s train caused significant disruption to passengers on the Elizabeth Line”.
A Network Rail spokesperson apologized for the “disruption and hardship caused to passengers this evening due to a failure of the overhead cables supplying power to trains in the Ladbroke Grove area”.
image source, hugh commerford
Passengers evacuate in darkness after hours on train stranded due to power outage
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