COMMUTERS faced an entire day of cancellations yesterday after London Paddington closed following an accident which brought down overhead lines near Slough.

Extensive damage was caused to 500 metres of overhead power lines when a test-run of a new Hitachi went wrong.

Many commuters travelling on the line between London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads were forced to change at Reading and go via Waterloo, adding up to an hour and half to journey times.

At Swindon station,Wendy O'niell, a self-employed nutritionist who meets clients at an office in London, told the Adver: "I've lost half a day of appointments because people have to travel a long way to see me, so they've all brought their tickets and have now lost their money and how can I reimburse them? There's nothing you can do but it has consequences.

"I jumped in the car to be early this morning, it's really frustrating. In business people don't like you cancelling. You can blame the railways, but you can only do that so often."

Some passengers took a more relaxed approach to the delays and didn't have any complaints.

Bill Smith, 56, from Swindon, told the Adver: "They had a good number of people downstairs to help you when you arrived. It's just one of those things I guess. My 9.42 was cancelled so I had to get the train to Westbury instead. I'll be an hour later but I'm in no real rush, I'm going down to have a couple of days off.

John Forster, 71, from Gloucester, who was travelling down to see his nephew for the day, said: "I didn't know anything about these delays. I'm retired so I don't have a fixed itinerary so the delay is more an inconvenience than disastrous.

"One elderly gentleman had an appointment at Hammersmith hospital but now he's just gone home.

"Some ladies I spoke to sitting next to me had booked to come up to London for the day and had tickets to see all these shows and for them it was a bit more difficult I think.

"But one of the positives is we wouldn't have conversed at all normally. At least it gets every talking."

A Network Rail spokesperson said: "Services to and from Reading and London Paddington station were suspended yesterday following severe damage caused to overhead line equipment in the Hanwell area yesterday evening

"We apologise to passengers affected by the disruption and our teams have been working through the night to open the railway as soon as possible.

"A rail replacement bus service has been operating between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport. We advise passengers to check before they travel with their train operator or visit www.nationalrail.co.uk for the latest travel information."