Disruption between Elephant & Castle and Tulse Hill expected until 21:00 

Route(s) affected

Between St Albans City and Sutton

Description

A fault with the signalling system between Elephant & Castle and Tulse Hill means that some lines towards Streatham are disrupted.

Trains running through these stations may be cancelled, delayed by up to 20 minutes or revised.

Disruption is expected until 21:00.

Customer advice:

You will need to allow extra time when travelling this afternoon, owing to this fault with the signalling system. This means there may be some cancellations, delays and last minute alterations to services.

Ensure to leave at least 30 minutes longer than usual to complete your journey.

Please check before you travel using online journey planners and live departure boards.

What does this mean for my journey?

Some service that run between St Albans City and Sutton may terminate at Cricklewood instead of their booked destination, so please check your journey ahead of time.

Services that usually run between St Albans City and Sutton and reverse will be reduced to two trains per hour. This means there will be a reduced service between Sutton and London, so please ensure you allow extra time to complete your journey today.

You may need to change trains to complete your journey.

Ticket acceptance:

You can use your existing ticket at no extra cost on the following services:

• Alternative Thameslink services between St Albans City and all London stations

• Southern services between London stations and Sutton

• South Western Railway services between London Waterloo and Wimbledon

• London Underground between London Terminals and Wimbledon

Planning your journey:

For help planning your journey, check live departure boards, view a live network map or see alternative route guides.

If you’re travelling within London, you can use the TfL Journey Planner.

Stay up to date on the move with Thameslink's WhatsApp channel. Live updates are available Monday to Friday, 07:00–21:00.

Can you tell me more about the incident?

A track circuit failure is disrupting trains which travel from London Blackfriars to Streatham.

When a track circuit fails, the signalling system will interpret this as a train remaining in place, even though there may not be a train present at all, or the previous service may have long since left the area.

As a result, further trains cannot be automatically allowed onto the relevant section of track. Train drivers will be stopped by red signals on approach. They will then get verbal permission from the signaller so that they can proceed, and will run at a heavily-reduced speed as far as the next signal. This is so that the drivers will stop safely if they see anything ahead of them.

In some areas, the sections between signals can be several miles long, so this can result in delays building up. Even with shorter sections of track affected, there would still be a delay of at least a few minutes to each journey.

Check before you travel:

You can check your journey using the National Rail real-time Journey Planner.

Compensation:

You may be entitled to compensation if you experience a delay in completing your journey today. Please keep your train ticket and make a note of your journey, as both will be required to support any claim.