A train broke down on a busy stretch of the line at Balcombe early this morning, causing major delays on services into Victoria and London Bridge, inconveniencing rail commuters travelling on Monday morning.

The cause of the disruption was Network Rail’s engineering work at Wareham which continued late into night, affecting all train services on Monday morning.

The affected services included First Capital Connect (FCC,) Southern and Gatwick Express services. Delays of up to an hour were seen between Haywards Heath and Gatwick Airport as trains got stationed one behind the other.

Commuters using South West Trains (SWT) from Bournemouth and Southampton into mainline Waterloo station were also inconvenienced by the one hour delay. Some early morning trains were cancelled.

Delay of up to 20 minutes was seen in Virgin Trains and London Midland to and from Euston due to signalling problems between Coventry and Birmingham New Street.

Meanwhile, the tube strike by London Underground drivers also delayed many train services in turn causing severe commotion in bus queues across London. The strike by members of the Aslef union has left thousands of commuters stranded during the rush hour, as 92% of train services were cancelled.

At one time, less than 40 trains out of the usual 476 were running, and several lines had no trains in service at all. By 11.30 am there were no train services available on the Circle, District, East London, Hammersmith and City, Northern or Waterloo and City lines. Few trains ran on Bakerloo, Central, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Piccadilly and Victoria lines.

Police said extra officers were deployed to patrol bus queues between Coventry and Birmingham New Street. A London Underground spokeswoman said that the strike may continue beyond the 5.30 pm deadline but normalcy would return tomorrow.

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