A c2c boss has issued an apology to customers after "deliberate damage" to cables caused travel chaos yesterday evening.

All signalling was lost between Barking and West Ham at about 2.30pm yesterday (March 8) and no London-bound services could run.

Network Rail dispatched a team of engineers to the area who then discovered deliberate damage had been caused to cables that feed the overhead lines and multiple components were damaged.

Because of the overhead lines damage and the signalling failure, no services could run on the London-bound track between Barking and West Ham until the power lines and signal failures could be repaired by Network Rail.

This severely restricted the number of trains c2c could operate.

The damage was so severe the disruption continued until the end of yesterday’s service and the fault was repaired by Network Rail overnight in time for this morning’s service.

Rob Mullen, managing director of c2c said: “We are really sorry to all of our customers who were caught up in yesterday’s disruption on the c2c route.

“We know this will have caused extensive delays to your journeys especially as it happened at the worst possible time during the afternoon and evening peak.

"We worked closely with our Network Rail colleagues to try and get our services up and running as quickly as possible but due to the severity of the damage, the disruption lasted until the end of our evening service, which we know will have caused issues for many of our customers.”

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Arrangements were made for c2c tickets to be accepted on Greater Anglia and London Underground services to help provide alternative options for travel.