Been that sort of day in the North West too! Points failure at Birkenhead Central meant no Wirral Line trains until about midday, then of course they were absolutely packed. Wouldn't have been so bad except two of them decided to terminate the service at Hooton as they were "late running". Never mind about 500 bewildered passengers stranded in the blazing sun with very little information, we mustn't get penalized for late running

.
Adding insult to injury, my 14:19 to South Wales was still on 4b when we eventually crawled into Chester, only to disappear as I ran around the platform island towards it!

You would think that they'd have been aware of the Wirral Line delays and hung on another minute for passengers in transit.
I got a shrug and "you'll have to ask the station manager" when I asked at the gates if I could go via Crewe to get back to Hereford, despite being on an AP ticket. The station manager immediately said yes that's fine, so I was only half an hour late back in the end, but what a palaver.
Points failure I can accept, signal failure I can accept, even leaves on the line I could accept, but terminating services short because they are running late completely baffles me.