London rail chaos runs into Friday

London commuters have woken up to another morning of train delays and cancellations following a major power outage near Clapham Junction station in south London on Thursday which caused severe disruption, trapping some passengers on trains for five hours.

Southern, one of the biggest operators to pass through Clapham Junction, warned on Friday morning that some services would be subject to cancellation, and many trains would be formed of fewer carriages than usual owing to Thursday's incident.

It said it would "run as full a service as possible" and tweeted that Southern tickets valid for Thursday would be accepted on services on Friday.

Network Rail warned commuters to expect delays of up to 30 minutes on Friday morning. The Gatwick Express, which was suspended on Thursday, is now running as normal.

Thousands of commuters were left stranded by the power outage, which affected all Southern Railway services coming into Victoria for much of Thursday, and caused disruption into the Thursday evening rush hour.

It was caused by the loss of power to the so-called third rail, a conductor rail that sits alongside the train tracks and carries 750 volts of electricity to power all of the trains in southern England. Clapham Junction is the biggest interchange station in the UK.

On Thursday, Network Rail said it remained unclear what had caused the loss of power. Southern said trains had been damaged due to "problems with the conductor rail" and warned passengers to avoid using London Victoria and advised using London Blackfriars, London Waterloo or London Bridge instead.

This was the latest significant incident to disrupt the journeys of commuters in the capital and follows months of disruption at London Bridge station.

British Transport Police and the London Fire Brigade were called in on Thursday morning to help evacuate thousands of commuters who had been stranded on trains stuck outside Clapham Junction station for more than five hours.

Some trains managed to stop at smaller stations for commuters to disembark, but up to 2,000 passengers were evacuated on to the tracks, with many tweeting about scenes of chaos.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

"We had to evacuate passengers from one stranded train with the assistance of the emergency services," a Network Rail spokesperson confirmed on Thursday. "Passengers have been incredibly co-operative and calm, and we thank them for their help and understanding in what has been a very difficult morning for them."

Describing the incident as "a major power supply problem", the spokesperson added: "Engineers are on site, and we aim to resume services as quickly as possible. Tickets are valid on all other routes into London, and Southern passengers are advised to avoid travelling through Clapham Junction, which is very busy. We are very sorry for the disruption to people's journeys today."

South West Trains services to and from Waterloo via Clapham Junction were unaffected but "busy", Network Rail reported.

Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT, said: "Chaos at major London railway stations is now a matter of course as the reality of trying to shove growing passenger numbers into an overstretched and understaffed network hits home. The hundreds of millions of pounds bled from our railways by privatisation would have gone a long way to building the capacity and reliability that passengers rightly demand."

Passengers whose journeys have been delayed are entitled to compensation by filling out a Delay Repay form available on the Southern Railway website.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation