West Midlands Railway, along with sister company, London North Western Railway has issued a warning that vandals could be risking the health of the public after a spate of graffiti incidents on trains.

The operator is running longer trains to enable passengers to follow social distance guidelines.

However, recent vandalism incidents across its depots in the West Midlands means that it is having to divert its resources to time-consuming graffiti removal, with carriages having to be taken out of service.

The most recent incident involved a LNWR Class 350 was targeted in Coventry. The train was to serve Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Walsall.

This incident follows a similar one in Wolverhampton last week and a number of incidents over the past month.

Jonny Wiseman, customer experience director for West Midlands Railway, said “With social distancing currently reducing the capacity of our trains, it is more important than ever that we have as many carriages as possible available for use. At a time when our cleaning teams are working extremely hard in challenging conditions, it is soul-destroying for them to face this pointless additional workload just to get carriages back on the tracks. Trespassing on the railway is illegal, extremely dangerous and can lead to serious injury. We urge anyone who witnesses this behaviour to contact the British Transport Police.”

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