{"id":761244,"date":"2026-09-05T22:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/761244\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T22:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:14:08","slug":"major-disruption-as-grass-fire-hits-heathrow-train-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/761244\/","title":{"rendered":"Major disruption as grass fire hits Heathrow train links"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trains to and from Heathrow Airport have been halted after a trackside grass fire caused delays and cancellations. <\/p>\n

National Rail said “major disruption” was expected until the end of Saturday following the incident which began shortly after 16:00 BST.<\/p>\n

A statement said all lines were blocked between London Paddington station and Heathrow’s terminals, as well as Reading, due to “a failure of the electricity supply caused by a fire next to the track”.<\/p>\n

An update from Network Rail Western late on Saturday said the fire had been extinguished, but warned that disruption would continue, possibly into Sunday morning for some services.<\/p>\n

It comes hours after a separate grass fire on Heathrow’s airfield shut a runway earlier on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Pictures on social media showed crowds of stranded passengers at Paddington, one of London’s main rail hubs.<\/p>\n

London Fire Brigade said six fire engines and around 40 crew members were tackling the blaze near Scrubs Lane, North Kensington.<\/p>\n

Great Western Railway, external<\/a> cancelled its services to Reading and no Elizabeth line or Heathrow Express services were running between Paddington and Heathrow on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The airport advised passengers to leave extra time for their journeys, adding that the Piccadilly line, which runs services to the airport, also has delays.<\/p>\n

Network Rail Western said some services on Sunday morning could face delays and cancellations, caused by trains being displaced by the disruption. <\/p>\n

Earlier on Saturday, Heathrow’s southern runway was closed while crews tackled a grass fire on the airfield. <\/p>\n

It caused some disruption with at least two flights diverted elsewhere. Heathrow apologised for any disruption and said the fire was extinguished quickly. <\/p>\n

That comes weeks after another grass fire near Heathrow’s southern runway which forced 18 flights to divert and destroyed a large area of grassland. <\/p>\n

While weather has cooled across much of the UK in recent days following record-breaking heat over the summer, fire crews have still been warning of wildfire risks.<\/p>\n

The Met Office’s Fire Severity Index, external<\/a> shows that if a wildfire was to occur, it would have a “high” fire severity in most of south-east England and some of the Midlands.<\/p>\n

The fire severity is “exceptional”, the highest level on the index, in some parts of London including Heathrow, as well as on the Essex and Suffolk coasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trains to and from Heathrow Airport have been halted after a trackside grass fire caused delays and cancellations.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-761244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761244","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=761244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}