Record Temperatures in Western Europe Create Havoc

As millions packed onto sweltering Tubes, buses and trains on Tuesday morning following the record-breaking Bank Holiday weekend, further misery awaited as train operators axed services due to the “severe weather”.

A number of services were cancelled due to the heat, while on Monday passengers were forced off a train in Oxfordshire owing to a faulty air conditioning system.

A video from one of the affected carriages shows passengers asking “what’s going on?” as they were told they would need to disembark before reaching their destinations.

Images showed commuters stranded on the platform at Surbiton station in Surrey on Tuesday morning after South Western Railway (SWR) cancelled services due to the heat.

National Rail said the railway network could be hampered by the “unusually warm” temperatures, noting that excessive heat can cause overhead power lines to sag and rails to buckle – not to mention the risk of trackside wildfires.

Sagging power lines risk being damaged if trains run at full speed. Many newer lines feature ‘auto-tension’ systems capable of pulling cables back into place, but older routes lack such equipment, forcing trains to slow down.

SWR said services on its network may be cancelled or delayed by up to 30 minutes for the remainder of Tuesday, affecting routes running from London Waterloo into parts of Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset.

Elizabeth line services in the capital have also been slowed due to “high track temperatures”; some services running from London Liverpool Street to Gidea Park were cancelled on Tuesday afternoon owing to the additional congestion caused by the speed restrictions.

The decision to scrap services due to the heat drew derision from passengers on social media. One wrote: “Services cancelled because of hot weather? How do they manage to run trains in Spain? Clown country.”

The heatwave has prompted calls for Labour to introduce a fixed maximum temperature at which workers would be permitted to down tools – a measure Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds has said she will “carefully consider”. …

ER: What else could go wrong? This …

The chaos comes as teen mobs have threatened a fresh wave of violent ‘linkups’ across the country after disorder erupted in Brighton, Hackney and Clapham on Bank Holiday Monday. Fights also broke out on Seaham beach in Durham and in Southend, Essex, where police were filmed arresting a teenager.

Images of Bournemouth beach on Tuesday morning showed mounds of litter left on the sand by Bank Holiday revellers. Despite 300 bins lining the seafront, virtually all were overflowing with rubbish, with bin bags piled up on the pavement beside them. One environmentalist partly blamed the ‘social media generation’ for assuming that somebody else would clear up after them.

Worth reading in full.