It has emerged that The Smiler was manufactured by German firm Gerstlauer, which also built the trains for a rollercoaster in Six Flags Park in Texas from which a woman fell to her death in 2013.
Thousands of London-bound commuters have been left stranded on held-up trains for up to four hours after a power supply problem caused chaos at Clapham Junction, the UK's busiest rail station.
We're getting officers to trains still stalled where possible.
Mayhem!!" Precious tweeted: "Complete chaos at Clapham Junction this morning as trains are delayed left, right and centre.
Which brings us to 2014, where tech-clusters and high-speed trains are on the menu, attracting all the cachet associated with dynamic entrepreneurial economies on the up, they are the latest in a long line of optimistic modernising visions for the north.
You see it in the physical infrastructure: all those new flyovers sprouting up around the city to enable the chauffeur driven classes to get about more easily, even while the commuter trains are still bursting; the crowded, chaotic public hospitals that get by while gleaming new private hospitals open up.
Figures from the website Delay Repay Sniper showed in January 2015 that as many as 52% of the 3,466 trains on the Brighton-to-London services run by Southern were late.
The transport minister, Theresa Villiers, said the consultation would ask whether longer franchises, of between 15 and 20 years, would encourage operators to finance improvements in in trains and services.
While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
Meanwhile, in Wales, flooding meant buses had to replace trains between Blaenau Ffestiniog and Llandudno Junction.
Will there ever be a day without issues?" Lewis Cook tweeted: "Southern trains are just useless," while Steve Slack wrote: "Southern Trains.
