Heatwave causes rail chaos

They are having to cope with hot, stuffy and overcrowded trains and delays caused by tracks buckling in the heat.

There were more problems yesterday when passengers suffered a nightmare 40 minute delay when a track buckled between Burgess Hill and Wivesfield.

The line was repaired shortly after 4pm but passengers suffered long delays compounded by a 20mph train limit.

Today passengers were told there is no quick-fix solution to the chaos caused by the hot weather.

Andrew Dobson, 44, who lives in Chailey, watched a mass scrum at Haywards Heath as people crowded on to substituted buses to continue their journey.

He said: "Luckily I get off here, so I avoided the problems caused by the line closure.

"But it was a shambles as everyone tried to get on one of the buses.

"It's generally been a very painful experience over the last couple of weeks."

Mike Kennedy, 53, of Bluebell Way, Burgess Hill, who travels to work in London every day, said he was getting used to the delays.

He said: "Going home I'm always delayed about half an hour. It's a particular problem in the heat because we are trapped on stuffy carriages and the windows sometimes aren't open. They can get red hot."

Raj Pandya, 36, who also works in London, thinks rail operators should have solved the problem.

He said: "The trains are often running extremely late and the train operators often don't say why. It makes it worse because they are often overcrowded."

Tim Nicholson, chair of the Rail Passengers Committee, who was sitting on a delayed train when he spoke to The Argus, said: "The problem is getting worse.

"Commuters are obviously getting very angry about it."

Steven Gauge, from Sussex Enterprise, said the rail network was a farce that was damaging business in Mid Sussex.

He said: "We have had the wrong kind of leaves, the wrong kind of snow and now the wrong kind of heat.

"Businesses are beginning to wonder why the Strategic Rail Authority cannot do something about what appear to be predictable problems.

"There has been a severe under-investment on the railway lines in this part of the country and we do not hold out much hope of them coming to terms with changing environmental conditions."

Network Rail said there was nothing it could do about the recurring problem of "extreme" temperatures.

A spokeswoman said: "Our tracks are engineered to withstand very cold temperatures, down to minus ten degrees in winter, and what we would expect to be a seasonal norm in summer."