RAIL commuters faced fresh disruption last night following a week of chaos on the region's train network.Services on the London mainline were delayed up to an hour last night after an alarm indicating potential overhead wire problems went off on the 4.

RAIL commuters faced fresh disruption last night following a week of chaos on the region's train network.

Services on the London mainline were delayed up to an hour last night after an alarm indicating potential overhead wire problems went off on the 4.02pm London Liverpool Street to Clacton train at Ingatestone.

The mainline was closed for 40 minutes while investigators examined the area.

A spokesman for rail operator One said the problem was linked to repair work that had been carried out incorrectly over the weekend.

He said the fact that equipment on the train detected the fault early had meant services did not face disruption on the scale of last Wednesday and Friday, which saw delays of four hours or more due to overhead line problems.

Speed restrictions were imposed in the area last night, which caused delays of between 30 and 60 minutes to peak services travelling to and from London.

The spokesman said: “We are unhappy something like this should happen. It was already unacceptable for passengers to suffer two severe nights of disruption but to have an additional delay tonight is not acceptable at all. We expect the delays to continue during the evening.”

The delays followed an earlier incident yesterday when a broken down train between Harold Wood and Brentwood caused early morning delays on the London mainline.

Services in Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk were running up to an hour late because of the failure, which happened around 6.30am.

One confirmed yesterday the company was in talks with Network Rail about who was to blame for the problems and how this would affect any payout.

“If it is found the disruptions are down to infrastructure, and therefore Network Rail, then we will be looking to get compensation from them.”