Fury as fed-up train passengers 'faint' on 'overcrowded' Easter journeys
Many hoping to travel home from London today for Easter weekend have been met with misery with some reports of passengers "fainting".
London Euston station is shut today due to engineering works and images show thousands crammed onto overcrowded trains.
Passengers flocked to Marylebone, Paddington and St Pancras to find alternate journeys from London.
Train stations were seen overflowing as carriages were crammed with people and their suitcases.
One furious passenger shared an image showing people sitting on the floor saying people were "fainting".
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They wrote: "Whose bright idea was it to close Euston on one of the busiest weekends of the year?
Trains were stuffed full today at Paddington (Cyann Fielding / SWNS)
This image shows queues at Stansted Airport train station in Essex (Bav Media)"On severely overcrowded @chilternrailway train from Marylebone to Birmingham, people are fainting and having to sit on floors. Still costs a fortune to travel in these foul conditions."
Sophie Earish, a student from Wembley Park, said her normal 20-minute tube journey to St Pancras took an hour due to closures on the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines.
When she arrived at St Pancras station, on her way to visit her partner in Loughborough, the 26-year-old said she then had to queue for an hour and a half for a train north.
Passenger are seen in gridlock as numbers completely overwhelm London Marylebone station (Martyn Wheatley / i-Images)She said: "I didn’t realise Euston was closed this weekend causing this mess. The queue to get to trains on the platforms were chaotic … why do they think it’s acceptable to do engineering works over the Easter weekend?
'It’s ridiculous, it seems to be the same every year.”
Euston station is closed from April 7 to 10 for track improvements.
This image shows crowds at St Pancras in LondonPlanned works also affected the Elizabeth Line and some National Rail services.
Another added: "Absolutely ridiculous. #Euston is closed, a planned closure on Good Friday, but rather than doing anything, everyone has been diverted to #KingsCross #StPancras and it’s a free for to get on any train."
In Dover, drivers faced 90-minute queues this morning with longer wait times expected in the afternoon.
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Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "First of all, the weather's clear, the ferries are sailing well, and all that sort of stuff, this weekend was always scheduled to be about 30% lighter than last weekend, today being the busier day.
"What we did is we worked with our ferry operators to try and spread the demand across the three days rather than all on this day.
"I know that that's challenging for the coach industry because they have itineraries that they want to maintain, but they've worked with the ferry operators to be able to do that, and that's been successful.
"We've also installed a new facility to expand our processing at the borders for coaches, that's operational, I just saw one goes through in just shy of 10 minutes.
"It's going to be a busy day, we're running probably about an hour to an hour and a half to get through border controls at the moment, and we will peak through probably early afternoon, and then it will start to slow down after that."
He said holidaymakers should bring drinks, food and entertainment for children if they are arriving at the port from 10am.
It comes after chaotic scenes at the port last weekend when thousands of people were delayed, reportedly by up to 14 hours.
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