150 passengers switch trains after fuel leak.

More than 150 passengers had their journey delayed for over two hours at the weekend when a fuel leak forced their train to be halted on the East Coast Mainline in Northumberland.

The south-bound Virgin Voyager train had to pull into sidings at Chevington, north of Morpeth, just after 1pm on Saturday after hitting something on the line and developing a leak in the tank containing 1,000 litres of diesel.

Passengers were taken off the 8.20am Aberdeen to Reading service and had to wait more than two hours before being transferred to a later south-bound Virgin train to complete their journey.

Fire crews from Ashington and Amble were called out to ensure the scene was made safe and helped the 154 passengers onto the relief train.

Officials from the Environment Agency, Network Rail and Virgin Trains were also at the scene as engineers tried to stop the diesel spillage. Eventually the damaged train was taken out of service and moved on to have the problem repaired. Yesterday a Virgin Trains spokesman said: "The train hit something on the line, although we don't yet know what that was, and it damaged the valve on the fuel tank, causing a leakage of diesel.

"There is a loop at Chevington so it went in there and the fire service were called out to try to stop the leak. Unfortunately, there were problems in doing this, so another southbound train was stopped alongside and the passengers were transferred.

"There was never any danger to the passengers but, obviously, they did suffer a lengthy delay and inconvenience and we will be arranging appropriate compensation.

"Damage to a train's fuel tank is an extremely rare occurrence but, with anything like that, it is a case of safety first." A Network Rail spokeswoman said the damaged fuel tank was drained at the scene.