A faulty railway line on the Chester to Cardiff route was found to be responsible for causing an entire fleet of trains to be taken out of service for repairs.
Arriva Trains Wales discovered a chip on a train wheel last Wednesday (February 28) leading to further checks which revealed ‘significant damage’ to all 27 long-distance trains.
Passengers faced major delays while the urgent safety checks and repairs were carried out on the class 175s and a handful of class 158 trains.
Services from south Wales to Manchester and north Wales were cancelled or reduced as a result.
The track fault has since been found and fixed.
In a joint statement, Bill Kelly, chief operating officer for Network Rail Wales and Borders and Simon Hughes, Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) engineering director, said: “Both ATW and Network Rail teams have been working around the clock since Wednesday to identify a defect between Cardiff and Chester.
“Our efforts were hampered by extremely challenging weather conditions that meant the defect was very difficult to locate, however once identified, the defect was repaired within the hour and we are now able to operate trains on the Marches line and have now resumed a normal service.
“We would like to thank our customers for their patience whilst we worked hard to maximise service operations during these very difficult weather conditions.”
Network Rail Wales said the wheel damage was due to ‘a minor track defect’, the cause of which is currently being investigated.
“Now the defect has been repaired with services returned to normal, a full root cause will be investigated,” said chief operating officer Mr Kelly.
