Railway services on the Greater Anglia network between London and East Anglia are facing further delays and cancellations after a person was hit by a train between Chadwell Heath and Romford.

Disruption on services through those stations will continue until 4pm and a number of trains have been cancelled even beyond then including the 16.52 Ipswich to London Liverpool Street service and the 17.00 London Liverpool Street to Norwich service.

The latest disruption comes on the back of mass cancellations this morning due to over-running engineering works, meaning many commuters will face delays on their journeys both to and from work.

Commuters at Ipswich station this morning expressed their frustration after dozens of railways services running through Colchester were cancelled.

Commuter Martin McCormack, who works for the Ministry of Justice in London, said he was “very disappointed” by the delays and the level of communication he had received.

“In all cases, whether it’s a fatality or over-running engineering works, communication is usually abysmal,” he said. “I’ve been on trains that have been delayed for five hours in the worst case and the level of communication from the conductor is ridiculous, you’d think in this day and age people with mobile phones could ring ahead and find out and get an accurate story of what’s going on.

“There have been cases where we’ve been told ‘there’s a delay, we don’t know what’s going on’, and then the next minute the train is going, sometimes even whilst the conductor is telling us he doesn’t know what’s going on. The driver seems to know more about what’s going on than the conductor in most cases.”

Chris Parras, who works in banking in the City of London, has only been commuting to London for a month and was facing his first major delay. He said: “I just hope it’s not repeated.

“We’re all standing here just waiting for something to happen, all you’ve (been told) is ‘over-running engineering works at Colchester, all lines blocked’.

“Eventually you will end up frustrated but it just really depends how quick and organised these guys are. I’ve been doing this for a month and there’s people doing it all year round and I’m sure their frustration will be a bit higher than mine.”

Tom Woods, who works in Norwich and normally arrives there at 8am, found out about the delays on Twitter. He planned to catch the 7.42am service from Colchester and said communication had been acceptable.

“The information is there if you’re inclined to get it,” he said.

Clare, who works in an IT company in London, said delays were “regular”.

“There are always delays once a week. I have to be in at nine, so I’ll have to go back home and work from home, fortunately I can.”

She described the level of communication at Ipswich station as “poor”. “The staff usually run a mile,” she said.

On their website, Greater Anglia said: “Owing to a number of technical problems encountered during this weekend’s engineering work, trains are unable to run through Colchester station.”

Greater Anglia are currently advising that services running through Liverpool Street, Shenfield, Southend Victoria, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich may be cancelled, delayed or revised at short notice.