London trains disrupted by fire alert, jumper

Spectators at the London Olympics faced severe disruption Tuesday after problems including a fire alert and a man threatening to jump from a bridge halted key train lines to the Games.

The stoppages marked the return of fears about London's creaking transport network after the first three days of full competition at the Olympics were relatively trouble-free.

Police said they had detained a man after the Javelin -- a fast train linking the Olympic Park in east London to St Pancras, where the cross-Channel Eurostar trains arrive -- was halted for nearly two hours.

British Transport Police said officers were called to a bridge on the line at Dagenham in east London "following a report of a man threatening to jump onto the railway track."

"A police negotiator attended the scene and the man was detained at around 2:30 pm (1330 GMT)," a spokesman said.

There was also disruption to Eurostar trains, police said.

Earlier there were long delays on one of the main underground railway lines, the Central Line, after a driver reported smelling smoke, said a spokesman for Transport for London (TfL), the capital transport authority.

Firefighters investigated and found no problems, but all trains were halted for several hours to the Olympic Park station of Stratford for several hours and there were severe delays on the rest of the line.

Passengers on one packed train that was stuck at a station for several minutes laughed when they heard a recorded message from London Mayor Boris Johnson telling them to plan their journeys ahead.

London's transport network is expecting 15 million journeys to be made on each of the busiest days of the Games compared with 12 million normally, TFL has said.

But fears of traffic chaos in London have so far failed to materialise.

Authorities have taken some of the dedicated "Games Lanes" for Olympic traffic out of operation as many officials have been taking public transport instead, Johnson said Monday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/london-trains-disrupted-fire-alert-jumper-163437226--oly.html

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