Rail passengers have been warned of delays and cancellations until the end of New Year’s Eve after 656ft (200m) of signalling cables were stolen in South Yorkshire. <\/p>\n
Several routes have been affected following the copper theft between Doncaster and Sheffield, which Network Rail said it was alerted to at about 04:00 GMT.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said engineers had been working on repairs to keep trains moving but passengers were advised disruption was expected until the end of the day. <\/p>\n
Network Rail said the theft had so far caused 13 train cancellations with 83 trains delayed by a total of 15 hours and 39 minutes. <\/p>\n
Services run by Northern, including local services in South Yorkshire and trains running from Doncaster to Hull and Scarborough, are among those affected.<\/p>\n
CrossCountry services between Edinburgh and Birmingham New Street, which call at Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds and York, have also been affected.<\/p>\n
TransPennine Express services running between Liverpool Lime Street and Cleethorpes, which call at Doncaster, have been hit as well.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Northern said services were able to run between Doncaster and Swinton again from about 09:30 GMT onwards, although they warned that “fewer trains will be able to operate along this route while this issue continues”. <\/p>\n
They also said that trains between Sheffield and Doncaster\/Adwick “may be delayed or revised”. <\/p>\n
“Northern train ticket restrictions have been lifted in the affected areas, including advance and peak restrictions, during this disruption,” they added.<\/p>\n
A National Rail spokesperson said: “Theft of signalling cables between Doncaster and Sheffield means trains must run at a reduced speed on all lines. <\/p>\n
“As a result, services operating between Doncaster and Sheffield may be cancelled, delayed by up to 25 minutes, revised or diverted.”<\/p>\n
A Network Rail spokesperson said further repairs would take place by engineers after the last passenger service. <\/p>\n
They added: “Cable theft like this is not only disruptive to passenger and freight services but also costs the taxpayer millions of pounds a year.<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely dangerous \u2013 with thousands of volts of electricity running through cables, posing fatal risks to perpetrators.<\/p>\n
“We work proactively to install new ways of securing cable and we work closely with British Transport Police to trace those responsible for theft.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rail passengers have been warned of delays and cancellations until the end of New Year’s Eve after 656ft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-345848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}