THE seeds of a common garden weed have delayed a train operated by York-based rail company Grand Central.

Grand Central, which operates services from Sunderland and Bradford to London Kings Cross, said airborne dandelion seeds caused disruption to one of its trains.

The dandelion clocks have come out across the country in the recent warm weather, but over the bank holiday weekend large drifts were in South Yorkshire and gusting across the main line.

Somewhere near Doncaster, the five-carriage train ploughed through the drift, sucking vast numbers of the tiny seeds into the air filters, which were soon blocked.

Four of the train’s five engines shut down as they overheated, leaving the vehicle running under a fraction of its normal power.

The driver coaxed the lone engine to stops at Pontefract, Wakefield and Brighouse, but the Bradford-bound train finally limped into Halifax, West Yorkshire, at what passengers described as a “walking pace”, an hour late.

A spokesman for York-based Grand Central Trains said when engineers inspected the engines, the filters were so packed with dandelion seeds that they looked like Shaun the Sheep’s fleece in the animation Wallace and Gromit.

He said: “We are disappointed one of the first trains we ran did not run all the way through.”

The word dandelion comes from the French phrase “dents de lion”, meaning lion’s teeth, which refers to the ragged, vaguely tooth-like shape of the leaves. However, some dispute this origin.