Dover port delays and train cancellations herald chaotic start to bank holiday

The start of the bank holiday weekend and half-term holiday has been marred by disruption for tens of thousands of rail passengers. Our comprehensive guide to bank holiday weekend travel disruption is here, but the most disruptive elements are detailed below.

On the flagship East Coast Main Line, which connects London King's Cross with Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland, train cancellations began at 8.30am due to “multiple disruptions across the LNER route”. One of the two northbound tracks is blocked because of a power failure. Trains to Edinburgh, York and Lincoln have been cancelled, along with the corresponding southbound trains. Between York and Doncaster, a fault with the signalling system is delaying trains.

Members of the TSSA union working for London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway have walked out in a dispute over payments for rest-day working. Passengers are told “a very limited service” is in operation, with no trains after 7pm on Friday. The strike continues on Saturday, with no trains running before 7am.

Over the bank holiday weekend, a key stretch of the East Coast Main Line will be closed in North Yorkshire. A journey from Newcastle to London King's Cross that normally takes under three hours will be extended by nearly two hours, with rail replacement buses between York and Darlington.

The closure will add pressure to a road network that was expected to be extremely busy as sunseekers head for the beach – encouraged by a bank holiday heatwave.

Normally the Sunday in a bank holiday weekend is relatively quiet – but on 24 May hundreds of thousands of football fans will be on the move for the final day of the Premier League. All 10 matches kick off at 4pm, with seaside teams in action. Brighton are at home to Manchester United and Nottingham Forest host Bournemouth.

The closure of the East Coast Main Line will make it difficult for Newcastle fans to travel to Fulham and Chelsea supporters to make the journey to Sunderland welcome Chelsea.

Between England and South Wales, the main Great Western Railway (GWR) link through the Severn Tunnel, carrying trains from London and Bristol to Cardiff and Swansea, will close on Friday night and not reopen until 9 June, for a power supply upgrade and track renewal work.

While some Cardiff-London trains will be diverted via Gloucester, many journeys will involve rail replacement buses and will take around an hour longer.

Delays with caused by the EU entry-exit system are affecting motorists heading for France from the Port of Dover. Shortly after 9am, the main ferry departure point posted on X: “There is currently a 90-minute processing time for tourist traffic in the Buffer Zone.”

Since 10 April, the European Union has been, in theory, applying the EES in full: collecting biometrics from every British passport holder crossing a Schengen area frontier. Dover has invested tens of millions of pounds in new facilities for motorists and passengers to register in the system, but issues with French IT connectivity means they remain unused. Passport details are instead being collected at the normal border check..

The Kent and Medway Resilience Forum is deploying “Operation Brock” – a contraflow system designed to keep traffic on the M20 and other roads in Kent moving when there is disruption to cross-Channel travel. In addition, the organisation has “an off-road site at Lydden Hill Race Circuit as a last resort contingency for passenger traffic that could be used during a major disruptive event”.

Read more: Our comprehensive guide to bank holiday weekend travel disruption