RAIL passengers faced long delays in and out of Huddersfield today after a theft at Deighton.
A thief stole signalling cable from alongside the Huddersfield to Leeds track near Deighton Station, last night.
As a result, the signals at Deighton were not working properly this morning and services were hit between Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester.
Travellers faced delays of at least 20 minutes on services that did run and some had to use buses instead of trains.
TransPennine Express was unable to run some trains and that meant more passengers crowding on to those that did run.
Northern reduced the number of trains between Leeds and Huddersfield to one per hour in each direction rather than two and ferried some passengers by bus from Mirfield to Huddersfield.
A spokesman for Network Rail, which looks after the network, said: "Our engineers are working to determine the extent of the damage."
Services were expected to be back to normal by this afternoon.
