Commuter woe as trains grind to a halt

Scotrail had to apologise to passengers caught up in the delays.

Services between Glasgow Central and East Kilbride were plagued with cancellations throughout the morning rush hour, meaning passengers at various stations on the popular route, including Pollokshaws West, Thornliebank, Giffnock, Clarkston and Busby were unable to travel into the city centre.

And if that wasn’t enough, to make matters worse, a second signalling fault at Cambuslang meant there were also delays and cancellations on the Glasgow to Edinburgh services.

Scotrail apologised to passengers who were affected by the issue at Crossmyloof, saying: “Shortly before 7.30 amon Wednesday,November 11, an infrastructure fault near Muirhouse Junction in Glasgow caused disruption to trains running from Glasgow Central towards East Kilbride/Neilston/Newton and Cathcart.

“At 7.40am our engineers arrived on site and began work to resolve the problem. A drain was installed to help clear mud from an area where it was blocking a set of points (rails that move trains from one track to another). We apologise to all our customers affected by this signalling problem last week.

“Our engineers worked to resolve the issue as quickly as they could, and our First Bus ticket acceptance scheme was in place to keep customers on the move.”

Commuters were scathing in their condemnation of the service provider, particularly those who had to find alternative means of transport to get to work.

Social media, especially Twitter was rife with comments, such as this from Elisa Smyth: “Safe to say @ScotRail are becoming more useless! Trains off and no replacement buses showing up!” or, from Hooray for Foxes who said: “First day of my new job and I can’t get there as @ScotRail have cancelled all of the trains. I have literally no other way to get there.

By 12 noon most services had resumed as normal for the majority of commuters.