Passengers shared their concerns after two women fainted on a packed train journey on Monday morning.
Conditions on the 8.27am Northern service from Liverpool Lime Street to Crewe became "unbearable". The cancellation of two earlier services meant the carriages became clearly overcrowded, according to a witness.
One woman, who did not wish to be named, told the ECHO: "I boarded at Lime Street to go to Manchester, and I have never been on a train journey like it. People were crammed in. One woman fainted in her chair, and then around 20 minutes later another woman fainted and had to be helped off the train, we could see her vomiting on the platform.
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"People were getting angry with each other and shouting about getting on and off or moving down the aisle, it was chaos, it was like the journey from hell."
The service ended up around 30 minutes behind schedule, arriving at Crewe at 9.53am. According to Northern Rail, the problems were related to the last minute cancellation of planned strikes by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) and Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA).
RMT suspended the strikes after Network Rail and train operating companies agreed to come back to the table. However train companies said they had struggled to get full services up and running at late notice, and services were hit with last minute cancellations.
Chris Jackson, regional director at Northern, said: “Following the late notice withdrawal of RMT strike action, the industry has worked hard to reinstate the full timetable at the earliest opportunity. Services were busy this morning due to some disruption after the knock-on effect and complexities involved in reverting back to a full-timetable.
“This train was the first to Manchester from Liverpool Lime Street after cancellations of an earlier service. It was also impacted by slippery rails, causing it to run late.
"We apologise to anyone who was affected by the busy services. We have reinstated the timetable for tomorrow, Wednesday 9 November."
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