Vandal attacks leaving West Midland Railway carriages out of action
Vandals have been warned after a spate of graffiti attacks on trains across the West Midlands.
West Midlands Railway has started its increased timetable and is now running longer trains to help enable passengers practice social distancing.
But following a spate of vandalism incidents, WMR is having to instead divert staff to sort out graffiti removal – and has taken carriages out of action.
The most recent incident was discovered yesterday morning when a carriage belonging to sister company London Northwestern Railway was targeted in Coventry. The train affected was due to travel across the West Midlands including Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Walsall.
This follows a similar incident in Wolverhampton last week and a number of previous instances last month during the national lockdown.
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Jonny Wiseman, customer experience director for West Midlands Railway, said: "With social distancing currently reducing the capacity of our trains, it is more important than ever that we have as many carriages as possible available for use.
“At a time when our cleaning teams are working extremely hard in challenging conditions, it is soul destroying for them to face this pointless additional workload just to get carriages back on the tracks."
