The nightmare has continued for travellers on a key London to Scotland rail route when yet another overhead power problem in Warwickshire led to delays.
Services had just returned to normal on the West Coast Main Line after six days of upheaval, when trouble struck at Atherstone at about 9.30am today (Thursday).
The overhead wire problem meant passengers on Virgin Trains and London Midland had to endure delays of up to 50 minutes.
The latest difficulty again called into question the robustness of the systems on the West Coast line on which Network Rail (NR) has only just completed a £9bn upgrade.
The Atherstone problem is the latest in a series of incidents that have meant that there has been no day since before Christmas that services have run normally on the West Coast line.
Before the Atherstone difficulty, NR staff had worked overnight into Thursday to bring services back to normal following an overhead power problem near Wembley in north-west London on Tuesday night.
This had prevented Virgin and London Midland running any trains in or out of London's Euston station for the first part of Wednesday.
