Passengers on routes operated by Great Western Railway and London North Eastern Railway continue to face disruption after the discovery of small cracks led to more than 100 Hitachi class 800 trains taken out of service for safety checks.

Services on key intercity routes have been disrupted since Saturday, May 8 but could return to normal after rigorous inspection of the trains.

Where are Hitachi trains made in the UK?

The Hitachi Class 800 trains are assembled at the company’s Newton Aycliffe plant in County Durham.

The factory plant was built to scale up production and allow the assembly of the new trains after a consortium led by Hitachi Rail Europe won the £5.7 billion contract to replace the old intercity stock.

The plant opened in September 2015 and assembles rolling stock for several key rail network operators, including GWR, LNER, TransPennine Express, Scotrail and Hull Trains.

It also won contracts to make the class 383 used by ScotRail. These trains have also been checked for the same cracking issue.

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What's the problem with the trains?

A number of Class 800 series Hitachi trains were taken out of service on Saturday, including 93 operated by GWR. Inspections identified cracks on the lifting points under the carriage of some class 800 trains.

Some trains were running again on Saturday but passengers are still facing delays across the network.

Railway Network News reports that the cracks appeared on the bogies’ lifting points – blocks of aluminium – which are used in depots when trains need to be lifted off the ground. They do not play a part in the normal operation of the train and therefore there has been no risk to passenger safety. However, there is a small chance that these components could become detached.

When will things get back to normal?

A disruption recovery plan has been launched to bring more trains back into operation. LNER has warned disruption will continue but it is hoped that the trains will be operating again by next week.

GWR will be bring in more trains this week and expects to reintroduce "more consistent robust timetables" for customers after the weekend.

Transpennine Express, Hull Trains and ScotRail have been able to operate services across all of their routes since last weekend.