THOUSANDS of passengers on the East Coast Mainline are experiencing hours of delays after a man’s body was found on the track.

British Transport Police (BTP) officers were called to South Otterington, near Northallerton, when the driver of a Transpennine Express Cross Country train spotted the body near the village’s disused station at 7.55am today.

It is not known whether the man had been hit by an earlier train.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service attended the incident, but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

A BTP spokesman said: “Enquiries are ongoing to establish the identity of the man and to inform his family and a file will be prepared for the coroner.”

A spokeswoman for Network Rail said the line reopened at 9.40am and that dozens of services run by East Coast, Northern Rail and Transpennine Express had been delayed following the incident.

She said: “Due to the remote location of the incident it took a while for us to reach the site and in that time a lot of traffic stacked up.

"Delays to some of the services are ongoing as we try to clear the backlog.

“We apologise to anybody who has been delayed as a result of this.”