London Waterloo delays: Rush-hour disruption caused by train arriving early

‘Earlier today, a train arrived earlier than scheduled,’ commuters were told

Early start: an arrival ahead of schedule caused problems for commuters

Commuters at Britain’s busiest railway station faced rush-hour disruption caused by a train arriving early.

The cause was explained by National Rail as an unexpected arrival: “Earlier today, a train arrived earlier than scheduled. This caused reduced capacity at London Waterloo.

“Services towards Reading, Windsor and Weybridge via Chertsey are mainly affected by this problem.

“Waterloo station is operating at its full capacity, especially during morning peak hours. Particularly on busy routes, where trains need to run to a very tight schedule, such incidents can cause knock-on delays that continue for hours afterwards.

“These knock-on delays often affect both the route with the issue and any connecting routes. In order to bring the services back to normal, South Western Railway will be forced to alter some of the services.”

The cause was the early arrival of a steam train due to operate an excursion.

A spokesperson for Network Rail said: “We apologise to passengers that were delayed this morning travelling into London Waterloo.

"This was caused by the arrival of a chartered steam train which limited capacity at the platforms.”

On Twitter, South Western Railways explained further: “An early train can just as easily cause delays as a late train as if it is out of its scheduled pathway it will get in the way of the train scheduled for that time.

“Then there is an unexpected train on a stretch of track other trains that share the line cannot run as scheduled. This then leads to congestion forming.”

Commuters took to Twitter to ridicule the explanation. “Bluedazzler” wrote: “Only you morons can turn an early train into a delay.”

“Gregorovich” wanted to know: “An unexpected train? How did it get on to the network? Was it airlifted in under cover of darkness?”

Services at the station are now returning to normal.

However, trains on the main line from London Victoria to Gatwick and Brighton are disrupted by signalling problems at Clapham Junction.