Passengers had to endure more travel misery on a key Scotland to London rail route yesterday.

Passengers had to endure more travel misery on a key Scotland to London rail route yesterday.

Virgin Trains had to cancel one service in three between London and Birmingham and between London and Manchester on the west coast main line following an earlier overhead cable problem at Watford in Hertfordshire.

Meanwhile in Scotland, Virgin was one of a number of train operating companies affected by signalling problems in the Rutherglen area.

This caused some services run by Virgin and CrossCountry to terminate at Motherwell rather than at Glasgow Central, while ScotRail had to run a replacement bus service between Whifflet and Cambuslang.

The Watford incident halted services in and out of London's Euston station on Sunday. The problems with the power lines came two days after the busy west coast route was closed when a light plane crashed on to it at Little Haywood, near Stafford, on Friday. The crash claimed the lives of three people - pilot Alan Matthews and married passengers Nick and Emma O'Brien - and left thousands of rail passengers stranded as services were halted.

Virgin Trains spokesman Jim Rowe said yesterday: "Following the plane crash and the problems at Watford, we have had to reduce the service."

This is the second New Year running that passengers have had to contend with travel disruption on the west coast main line.

Last year extensive engineering work at Rugby overran, as did work at two other sites, leading to the Office of Rail Regulation fining Network Rail a record £14m.

In other disruptions, CrossCountry and First Great Western services were delayed by signalling difficulties in Oxfordshire and National Express East Anglia trains were unable to call at Colchester Town station in Essex due to signalling problems.