Three of London’s busiest train stations faced hours of delays and cancellations on Wednesday evening, leaving thousands of passengers struggling to get home.

Trains in and out of Victoria and London Bridge were severely disrupted after a “major signal failure” near East Croydon.

Images posted on social media showed hundreds of passengers held on the station concourse at Victoria, unable to catch Southern, Southeastern and Gatwick Express trains.

Thameslink services out of London Bridge were badly hit and there were chaotic scenes at St Pancras in the early evening as all southbound trains on the Thameslink connection were disrupted. Some passengers were directed to go Victoria only to find even worse travel chaos there.

One passenger, Rob Broomby, a TV producer, was stuck at Victoria and said it was the “worst transport chaos” he had experienced since the 1990s.



Victoria and London Bridge are Britain’s second and fourth busiest stations, carrying 75 million and 48 million passengers in 2017/18 respectively.

There were angry scenes at Victoria after a partition was pulled across the route to the Gatwick Express and Southern platforms. Passengers were prevented from heading towards those platforms as staff tried to filter through arriving commuters.

There was a knock-on effect with disruption to trains running along the south coast from routes such as Eastbourne to Brighton.

Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove and Portslade, was caught up in the disruption at Victoria.

Victoria Station at standstill, no services due to leave thanks to ‘major signalling failure’.



I’m sorry to every passenger, I know there’s a lot more that needs sorting on this service, I’m fighting for that.



You have been let down badly this evening, pic.twitter.com/JjlIkdDjZQ — Peter Kyle MP (@peterkyle) December 18, 2019

He described the central London hub as being “at a standstill” and apologised to those struggling to get home.

Sam Pugh, who works for the disability charity Leonard Cheshire and said she had been helping to coordinate its campaign to improve access to public transport called Get On Board, said it was “a nightmare”. She said she was profoundly deaf but information was only being relayed by the public address system at Victoria.

2/ Got to Victoria at 5pm & all trains were cancelled. Thousands of commuters packed into Victoria station. Information was only being relayed via tannoy announcements - which I can't hear. I also couldn't hear the people around me when I asked for help. #TrainsForAll — ☁ Sammy ☁ (@Gyarachuu) December 18, 2019

Network Rail apologised and advised people to find other routes if possible.

PA Media contributed to this report