COMMUTERS were left frustrated for the fourth day in a row after rail services across East Lancashire faced severe delays and cancellations yesterday.

Numerous services including on the Manchester to Blackburn and Blackburn to Colne lines experienced major disruption as a shortage of drivers led to cancelled trains.

Passengers have now been asking why Northern Rail, which operates the trains on these lines, were not better prepared for a problem that they ‘obviously knew would cause problems for people.’

Catherine Holmes, a regular commuter, said she has been late for work two days in a row thanks to the disrupted services.

She said: “This week alone I have twice been over an hour late to work and have to constantly check trains during the day to see what has been cancelled and if I can get home.

“This morning the 7am and 8am trains were cancelled but because the eight o’clock train wasn’t officially cancelled until half and hour later, we were told a replacement bus would not be provided because the 9am train was running.

“We had to sit on Bamber Bridge station with no facilities for two hours in the rain until they provided a train.”

Another commuter, who travels to Blackburn from Manchester, said: “This has cost me extra time and money.

“Northern Rail do nothing but let commuters down, and they have no accountability for their actions.

“How they can’t provide replacement buses when they know cancellations are inevitable is beyond me. Commuters already pay a premium for a service that is less than sub-standard.”

Liam Sumpter, the regional director for Northern said: “On behalf of Northern I would like to apologise for the delays and cancellations passengers have been experiencing, especially over the last couple of weeks.

“The root cause of the delays and cancellations we are facing on some lines around Manchester is the major engineering work to electrify the Blackpool line, which overran by approximately three weeks.

“Once the line was handed back to us we decided to run a very limited train service for passengers on the Blackpool line, whilst we continue with the driver training programme, rather than keep the line fully closed for even longer.

“Unfortunately this means we are temporarily facing some driver shortages as we continue to train our drivers.

“These temporary driver shortages mean we are very thin on the ground and lack resilience when things go wrong meaning we are having to make last-minute changes to a number of services, which in turn, is causing the delays and cancellations.”

The disruption comes just days before union the RMT's planned strike action on May 9.

Replacement bus services will be running on the day of the strike and commuters are asked to plan ahead for their journey.