PASSENGER train services were brought to a standstill for hours after the engine compartment of a freight train caught fire in Middlewich.

More than 60 trains on the West Coast Main Line were delayed for almost an hour each on Monday night as fire crews battled a blaze on board a Freightline locomotive, just north of the A530 Nantwich Road.

Six fire crews, including firefighters from Middlewich and Winsford, attended the incident shortly before 9pm and around 50 officers spent more than four hours putting the flames out.

Sub officer Paul Winder, from Middlewich Fire Station, said: "The first issue was actually getting access to the site. We gained access through Wimboldsley Hall Farm but by the time we got to the second bridge where the train had stopped, the locomotive was well alight.

"We had to wait for an emergency isolation to be carried out before we could put water anywhere near it. Even when that was done we had to wait for railway engineers to declare the site safe because there was about 1,000 vaults of residual electricity in the lines.

"By the time we got to tackle the fire the locomotive was completely destroyed."

A spokesman for Freightline said the train was carrying 49 containers of non-hazardous marine cargo from Southampton to Scotland, none of which had been damaged.

She said: "Just before 9pm the train driver realised the second locomotive had caught fire. This locomotive suffered serious damage but fortunately the driver was not injured."

A spokesman for Network Rail confirmed that overhead lines had to be closed for safety purposes and damage was sustained to the overhead line equipment, which was repaired after the train was removed from site.

She added: "This resulted in 64 trains being delayed for a total of 4,058 minutes. There were also 13 full and eight part cancellations."

Network Rail and Freightline will be carrying out a full investigation into the cause of the fire.