Tube passengers face disruption after cable fire

Thousands of Tube passengers will face disruption today following a cable fire and power failure in east London.

The problem - at Barking station last Friday - meant a suspension of services between Plaistow and Dagenham East on the District line and between Whitechapel and Barking on the Hammersmith & City line.

Full services are not expected to resume until Wednesday following the fire which destroyed dozens of 50-year-old cables affecting signals and traction on District line and Hammersmith & City line services east of Whitechapel.

The heat was so intense that cables and equipment melted. All services on the District line are affected and Circle line services are not operating on the branch between Hammersmith and Edgware Road. Replacement bus services will run on the affected sections of the Tube.

Howard Collins, London Underground's (LU) chief operating officer, said: "On behalf of LU I would like to apologise for the disruption caused by this incident. Our engineers have been working around the clock to get as many services as possible back up and running, and we are now in a position where the majority of stations affected on Friday now have some service.

"There will be some disruption through the early part of this week, but we are doing everything we can to resume normal services as soon as possible."

To add to Tube passengers' problems this morning, a signal failure at Baker Street caused delays to Metropolitan line services.