Angry commuters faced more rail chaos as the £165 million revamp at Leeds Station failed to be completed by today's deadline.

A signalling failure and problems with overhead electric cables meant that passengers arriving at the station faced further service cancellations and delays.

One of the passengers left stranded this morning was Leeds North West Labour MP Harold Best who said he was disappointed with the state of the station.

He said: "I have got some good friends in Railtrack and I know they have been working extremely hard to get all the problems resolved speedily.

"I am disappointed, to put it mildly."

A Railtrack spokesman said the disruption had been caused by signalling problems and the failure of overhead electric cables.

She said: "The station is open again. We had a signalling error, and once that happens we have to shut everything down and check it. We have been working around the clock to try to make sure things are running.

"There are still problems with the electric GNER Intercity services because they're electric and we're having problems with the overhead cables.

"What we're hoping to do is to get a diesel engine to shunt the GNER trains out of the station to get them away.

"But the local Northern Spirit trains are coming through the station as normal.

"We can only apologise to our passengers for all the delays."

The spokesman added that London-bound passengers would continue to be bussed to Wakefield Station where they would be able to catch their trains.

The chaos at Leeds followed news that the cost of emergency work across the UK's rail networks following the Hatfield rail crash had spiralled to £580 - almost double the original estimate.

The bulk of the cost - about £400 million - was expected to relate to payments contractually due to the train operating companies and freight operators, the company said.