HUNDREDS of train passengers were left stranded yesterday after Northern was forced to cancel around 10% of its services through Bolton.

The problems came after a gardener working as a contractor for Network Rail accidentally cut a cable, causing a fault with the signalling system through the town.

Issues were revealed after Bolton North East MP, Sir David Crausby, asked Northern's regional director, Liam Sumpter, why so many trains had been cancelled.

In a reply last night, Mr Sumpter said: "Today, there was a track circuit failure at Bolton caused, as I understand it, by Network Rail's vegetation contractor cutting through a cable, and that meant having to send a number of Blackburn services the long way around to Manchester (via Todmorden) which did have a significant impact on capacity, reducing it by around 10%, which is a fair amount for Bolton, as you can imagine."

Network Rail confirmed that they had been forced to repair the cable in the early morning, after engineers were made aware of the issue.

A spokesman said: “Shortly before 05:30 on Tuesday July 31, a problem was identified with the signalling system in the Bolton station area.

“Network Rail engineers visited the site and carried out work to repair a severed cable. Following work to successfully repair the cable, the signalling system was fully restored at 07.45.

“A number of Northern’s train services were disrupted due to this incident and we’d like to apologise to anybody who was impacted by this and thank them for their patience.”

The problems follow the reintroduction of around 126 of Northern's service on Monday, after a previous timetable change in May caused chaos for commuters across the North West.

The introduction of the new trains was not without issue however, after a train fault at Clitheroe caused delays through Bolton, meaning only 95% of the total planned trains were actually available to passengers.

In response to the issues yesterday, Sir David said: "It's just bad news after bad news, it's unbelievable. I think what it really demonstrates is that even after all this change, Northern are just nor capable of running the railway.

"Enough is enough, we need another operator. There comes a point were we have just got to say they clearly can't do the job.

"Network Rail have not covered themselves in glory either. Hopefully, they will get their act together. Clearly, they are all to blame. The whole system doesn't work, there's too many different parties involved and whenever anything goes wrong they all blame each other.

"The system doesn't work and we should bring the system back into public ownership. If Northern were as good at running a railway as they are at making excuses there would be no problems."

Northern declined to make a response to the criticism but explained that the issues through Bolton yesterday had been caused by the actions of Network Rail staff rather than their own.