21 October 2025 •
We are very sorry for the disruption our customers experienced yesterday.
What happened?
At approximately 07:00 on Monday 20 October, a track circuit failure was reported in the Westcliff area. As a result of this failure, trains had to run at a reduced speed, which caused a knock-on effect to c2c services in both directions.
Upon confirmation of the track circuit failure, arrangements were made for c2c tickets to be accepted on the First Bus route. Replacement buses were also arranged between Leigh on Sea and Shoeburyness.
Network Rail dispatched a team of engineers to the area, and normal service resumed at approximately 15:00.
Unfortunately, at 16:10 a lorry was reported to have collided with a bridge in the Upminster Bridge area. For safety reasons, all trains had to run at a reduced speed until the bridge could be assessed for damage, and this caused knock-on delays and cancellations to our service.
Upon confirmation of service disruption, arrangements were made for c2c tickets to be accepted on Greater Anglia services between Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria.
At 16:30, Network Rail declared the bridge safe for trains, but service disruptions persisted into the evening peak.
Rob Mullen, c2c Managing Director, and Katie Frost, Route Director for Network Rail Anglia, issued the following statement: “We apologise for the disruption experienced on c2c Railway services yesterday. The issues were due to a signalling system fault in the Southend area, which was subsequently compounded by a vehicle colliding with a bridge at Upminster.
“Our signalling engineers worked as quickly as possible to fix the fault on the line near Southend, while we had to inspect the bridge at Upminster to check it was safe for train services to start running at normal speed again.
“We know that many passengers were delayed while we worked together to fix the issues and we’d like to thank everyone for bearing with us.”
Compensation for delays
If you have been delayed, you will be eligible for compensation for your journey. Find out more about the compensation we offer, and how to claim, here.
c2c smartcard users: You will receive automatic compensation provided you tapped your Smartcard at both the start and end of your journey. If you have not been able to do so, you will have to make a manual claim for your delay. This is because our system will not have full information about your journey and cannot calculate your automatic compensation. We recommend you check your online account to ensure our automatic payments do reflect your actual delay. If you feel they do not, you can use your online account to correct the automatic system or alternatively submit a manual claim.
Paper ticket holders, Oyster and contactless card users: Please fill out your details on this online delay repay form.
Contactless customers: Customers who travelled from a c2c station using pay as you with contactless ticketing can claim delay repay by providing the full details of their affected journey. You can access your journey history and statement from the Transport for London website by following these steps:
- Go to https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk/ and then click on 7 day contactless journey and payment history tab
- When prompted enter your personal information (name, address and email) and details of the contactless card used for the delayed journey
- Once the payment card has been located, the site will display a list of all journeys and payments made within the last 7 days
- At the bottom of the page there is a button where you can ‘download statement’
- This statement should be attached to your Delay Repay Claim: c2c Delay Repay | Claim Compensation on 15 Minute+ Delays