A scaffolding pole was thrown on to the rail tracks newar Billingshurst station last Saturday, causing severe disruption to services.
The pole was hit at 10.19 on Saturday morning by Southern’s 09.56a, Bognor Regis to London Victoria. As is normal procedure, the electricity feed to the third rail was isolated which brought all train traffic to a standstill in the area.
A spokesman for Southern said: “It appears that a scaffolding pole had been thrown on to the track between Pulborough and Billingshurst leading to some pretty serious disruption to Southern services.
“The power remained off while a crew was dispatched to remove the offending pole. Once the pole, which had disintegrated on contact with the train, was recovered, Southern services were delayed for up 35 minutes after the power was restored.
“But then it was discovered that the third rail had been damaged as a result of the incident, so power was again isolated and the rail was repaired.
“During this time, there were no Southern services and a rail replacement bus service was put in place for stations on the Arun Valley Line.
“This situation remained until about 16.30 when train services were restored.”
It is believed that the incident occured quite far down the line, out of sight of CCTV cameras, otherwise we would happily of printed images in an attempt to catch the idiot (let’s hope there’s not more than one of them!) responsible.
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