Travel: Commuters speak of their frustration as rail lines close due to storm

Ipswich rail station after storm St Jude caused more rail closures

Commuters were turning up this morning only to be told that no direct services will be running from the busy station.

Alex Williams, 26, has been trying to get to her London home since Sunday evening after staying in Woodbridge over the weekend.

She said: “It’s a bit ridiculous, they had all night to clear it up. Luckily I had someone to stay with on Sunday night. I was expecting a reduced service today but I was not expecting cancellations.”

Management consultant John Devlin, 63, was fed-up queuing for a bus to take him to work in London.

“I’m surprised that there are still problems today,” he said.

“I do not understand why it takes so long to clear trees. I did not go to work yesterday because of the disruption.”

Replacement buses are currently taking people to Manningtree where shuttles are running to Colchester with services then available to London Liverpool Street.

Amanda Cowan was on her way to London for a day out to see a West End show with her young son Max.

“I’m being cool about it, I’m not too stressed about it. We thought we would get there for about 11am but it now might be a bit longer,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Greater Anglia said its engineers alongside Network Rail colleagues had been working through the night to remove fallen trees from the lines and repair overhead wires.

She said: “We are working really closely with Network Rail to get the affected services up and running again.

“It’s been an enormous job and we are working to restore the services as quickly as we can.”

Earlier today it was expected services would be running again from noon but the spokeswoman said she did want to promise a time which the company may not be able to keep to.

Yesterday’s storm, which is considered to be the worst for more than a decade for parts of north Essex and Suffolk, caused winds of up to 80mph to hit the region.