There’s nothing worse than waking up when the stars are still out so you can get a decent seat on the train, only to have a grating voice over the speaker inform you of ‘severe delays on the line'.

On Tuesday, a train broke down between South Croydon and Sanderstead in south London, causing delays on the crisis-hit Southern Rail line for the rest of the day.

A spokesperson for Southern Rail told the Croydon Advertiser that customers were to expect 25 minutes of delays to their journey.

But Oscar Webb, a freelance journalist, found a tweet about the delay that Southern Rail deleted:

Yes, the train sent to help the broken down train had broken down too.

You can understand why they probably wanted to keep that piece of information to themselves, although it later emerged that the broken down train was carrying freight and not passengers.

Southern Rail replied to Webb’s tweet, appearing to confirm that the delay happened, but that neither of the trains were theirs...

A spokesperson for Southern Rail told indy100:



I can confirm that that tweet is ours. The train that was sent to rescue the first train did break down at about 20 past eight. It was soon on the move again and completed the rescue [and by ten past ten last night] both trains had pulled in.

Why was the tweet deleted?