THE region's rail operator was criticised again last night after a morning of severe disruption on the London mainline caused train delays and cancellations.

THE region's rail operator was criticised again last night after a morning of severe disruption on the London mainline caused train delays and cancellations.

Passengers travelling to and from the capital were left in disarray yesterday when a broken down engine between Shenfield and Ingatestone and poor weather conditions led to a hold up of 45 minutes for a number of services from Ipswich, Colchester, Braintree and Clacton.

The chaos, which continued throughout the morning, started as early as 6.30am and the 8.30am Norwich to Liverpool Street, 8.51am Cambridge to Liverpool Street and 11am Norwich to Liverpool Street services were all cancelled.

The misery was further compounded in London when computer problems on the underground led to the suspension of the entire Central line during most of the morning rush-hour and late-finishing weekend engineering work led to a complete shutdown of the District and Circle lines.

Commuter Paul Hale, who travels daily from Colchester, said: “I am a derivatives trader and have to be in the office half an hour before the opening of the markets at 8am.

“As a result I put a lot of trust - not to mention money - into One to get me to work on time. Unfortunately this has not been the case in recent weeks.”

A spokesman for One apologised to customers and said the delays were caused by two problems.

“Firstly we had to deal with a broken down train at Ingatestone and until that could be recovered one line was blocked, which had an effect on services,” he said. “The other problem was down to the weather we have had over the last 18 or 24 hours.

“The heavy rain and strong winds means that trains can only travel at certain speeds. Customers delayed by more than half an hour we do offer compensation and they should write to our head office In Norwich.”