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Tube chaos on the Piccadilly line caused by an ongoing shortage of trains could last until February, rail union bosses have claimed.

The RMT Union said delays on the line could continue for a further seven weeks as it repeated calls for this weekend's Night Tube launch to be pushed back until the fleet of trains are fixed.

Commuters have faced severe disruption on the line after trains with damaged wheels caused by wet weather were taken off the tracks to be repaired.

Transport for London told the Standard it could not estimate when the problem would be fixed but expected a full service to run again “in the next couple of weeks”.

On Tuesday, 64 out of the 79 Piccadilly lines trains needed to run a full daily service were in working order – 80 per cent of its entire fleet.

The RMT said it “did not make sense” to press ahead with the launch of the Night Tube on the line when a full service was not running during the day.

TfL said it was confident the problems would have no impact on the Night Tube ahead of its debut and that it had the 25 trains needed to run the service.

The Night Tube service will run every 10 minutes between Cockfosters and Heathrow Terminal 5, barring Terminal 4, on Fridays and Saturdays.

The daytime service is currently running with severe delays on the line and a shuttle service between Acton Town and Rayners Lane.

A RMT spokesman said: “Our position remains the same. You have only got to look at the daily situation on the Piccadilly Line and the current availability of trains.

“We have been told that the situation is going to go on until February.

“It doesn’t make any sense when the daily service is currently a skeleton service to start running the Night Tube on the line.

“We think the Night Tube operation should be suspended until the fleet problems have been resolved.”

In a statement on its website TfL said: “We are sorry for the current disruption to customers using the Piccadilly line.

"This is due to a longer than usual period of leaf-fall, which has damaged the wheels of many of our trains.

“We will be able to return more trains to the line each day. However, there is a backlog of trains. We are working to restore a full service as quickly as possible.”

The Piccadilly line is the latest to introduce the 24-hour service after it already launched on the Northern, Victoria and most of the Central line.