An 18-year-old student spotted a track fault that closed Merseyrail's Northern Line down during rush hour.
Justin Doyle was at Hall Road train station in Crosby on Thursday November 4 during an educational visit with his class and lecturer when he noticed a hazardous fault on the tracks.
After raising the issue, the line was shut for maintenance within the hour, with people forced to wait to get home during rush hour.
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One of Justin's lecturers, Paul Morton, told the ECHO : "It's a level two track and rail on site maintenance on a study programme. So they're 16-18 years-old.
"They went on an educational visit to Hall Road and the idea was to look at the health and safety. What they did was they went onto the platform and they were inspecting from a distance what they call the permanent way which is the railway and the surrounding areas.
"When they were out there, one of the students, Justin Doyle, spotted a fault on the track which related to part of the rail which was a hazard. It was good news that they were there. It was then reported to the station master who saw the seriousness of it and contacted the maintenance team who responded rapidly.
"You could see the problem as the trains went over this part of the track. That was investigated and the railway was closed going right through to town for urgent maintenance work.
"I think the public were a bit frustrated from what Sean said because he saw the queue outside but from a safety perspective it was great news that they spotted it. From a student perspective it was good."
Merseyrail tweeted at 2.52pm: "Due to a track fault at Hall Road. Services on the Hunts Cross line will start & terminate at Seaforth & Litherland Services on the Southport line will start & terminate at Formby."
Due to the fault rail replacements were put in place.
At 3.23pm Merseyrail tweeted: "Due to a track fault at Hall Road Services on the Hunts Cross line will start & terminate at Seaforth & Litherland Services on the Southport line will start & terminate at Formby.
"Rail replacement buses are now in operation between Seaforth & Litherland & Formby."
It wasn't until 6pm trains were resumed.
They tweeted at 5.57pm: "Services on the Southport & Hunts Cross line are about to resume. Services are subject to delay & short notice cancellations until a normal working timetable is restored."
Allan Gibbs-Monaghan, infrastructure delivery manager for Cheshire and Merseyside at Network Rail, said: “We’re extremely thankful to the member of the public for seeing this potentially dangerous track issue so we could get our engineers out to fix it straight away.
“They spotted that a metal bracket which joins rails together was cracked and the person did exactly what we needed them to do – contact us immediately – so we could put it right.”
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