56 hours of delays to train travel cause by vandals in region

VANDALS caused 56 hours of train delays in the East Midlands last year, figures from Network Rail show.

Analysis of more than five million Network Rail records shows that there were 550 delays on their East Midlands routes in the 12 months to June 2017 that were put down to vandalism and theft.

Many of these were knock-on delays caused by earlier problems.

On top of the delays there were also 84 services that had to be cancelled due to vandalism and theft.

Throwing stones at trains was one of the most common ways vandals disrupted train services.

The worst time of the year was a four-week period beginning in mid-September when there were almost 100 vandalism incidents in the East Midlands during this time.

Nottingham and Derby were some of the worst affected areas.

Passengers all over the region had to wait because of vandals and thieves - it wasted time in Hinckley, Leicester, Kettering, Matlock, Melton Mowbray, Loughborough and other places.

Across Britain vandals and thieves caused a grand total of 1,687 hours of train delays.

This would be enough time to travel from London to Edinburgh and back by train 180 times.

On top of this were thousands of cancellations, piling further misery on to rail passengers.