Christmas was ruined for tens of thousands of passengers caught up in train chaos when botched engineering work over-ran, a damning report said today. More than 115,000  people faced 'widespread confusion, frustration, disruption, discomfort and anxiety' in the Christmas rail engineering overruns, the rail regulator said. Network Rail came under fire for late-finishing work over the festive period which hit services into King's Cross, Paddington and Finsbury Park stations in London. Passengers were left in tears in some cases with hundreds of journeys ruined by the overrunning works. The disruption caused chaos at King's Cross, Paddington and at Finsbury Park where there was overcrowding
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Office of Rail Regulation found 115,000 people were affected by problems
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Paddington and King's Cross were to reopen on December 27 after works
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But Paddington was closed all morning and King's Cross all day
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Paddington safety work which should have taken two hours took ten
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People faced 'widespread confusion, frustration, discomfort and anxiety'
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The planning of the King's Cross work did not take proper account of the impact of failing to hand back a working line on December 27;
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A contingency plan developed on the evening of Boxing Day was ineffective and resulted in Finsbury Park becoming so overcrowded it had to be closed for a time;
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Reporting of the progress of the works at Paddington was inaccurate so that the operational contingency plan was not enacted until many passengers had already been severely delayed.
The report said: 'Passengers who travel between @placeholder and the new year include families with young children, the elderly and vulnerable often travelling with lots of luggage in an unfamiliar environment.