Anyone travelling on the southern rail network on the mainland yesterday will have been affected by a fatality in Surbiton earlier in the day.
The impact of the incident affected the entire rail network and these photos below taken at Waterloo station show just how many people (in London at least) were caught up in the delays (read the account of an OnTheWight reader below).
Several of those who shared photos on social media have very kindly agreed to let us share them with you.
Click on images to see larger versions
Rail staff handled situation well
One of our OnTheWight readers was actually on the train that was involved in the fatal incident.
The commuter from East Cowes told us,
“I was on the 10.30 Southampton Central train to London Waterloo that had the fatality at Surbiton, and, after being on the stopped train for two hours, I have a new appreciation for the driver, crew and police who handled the horrifically grim situation with our train.
“We all become rightfully angry when technical faults and general incompetency by the train companies make us late to work or miss client meetings. But besides being on the receiving end regular, aggressive moaning from passengers, the rail staff really do have a difficult personal challenge in these extremely tragic circumstances. They were very professional, and we all felt quite sorry for them.”
Whole rail network ground to a halt
They went on to say,
“It turns out the Surbiton area is a main artery to the south and southeast, so that particular ‘bottleneck’ location forced the whole rail network to a grinding halt for most of the day, and it has taken a long time – into this morning – to play catch-up with getting trains and crews to the right location.
“I’ve never seen Waterloo station so full of people in over ten years as it was during yesterday’s evening commute.”
SouthWest Trains: An apology for the disruption to your journey on Monday 27 April
We are very sorry for the serious disruption that many of you will have faced whilst travelling on our services yesterday. This was due to two significant incidents at critical locations on our network.
The first incident occurred at approximately 1130, when we received a report of a person being struck by a train on the lines between Wimbledon and Surbiton. Due to the unfortunate nature of these incidents, emergency services had to close all lines in both directions for two hours to conduct investigations. During this time, many trains were unable to reach their destinations for many hours. This not only affects the trains in service at the time of the incident, but also has a knock-on effect to following services. For example, a train crew that should have been working on a train departing London Waterloo at 15:00 will not yet have arrived at London Waterloo at 15:00 as they will have been working on a previously delayed train.
We worked quickly to divert and alter trains in order to reduce the cascade effect of these delays, however the lines between Wimbledon and Surbiton are essential for us to deliver a full train service, and so their closure led to significant disruption for both long-distance and suburban services.
While we were recovering the service in order to run punctually during the evening peak, we had a second significant incident at Clapham Junction, where a train developed a fault and became unable to move forward. It had stopped across the key junction which serves the Windsor lines. The ‘Down Windsor Slow’, ‘Down Windsor Fast’ and ‘Up Windsor Fast’ lines were all closed for two hours from 16:25. This meant that all trains to Reading, Windsor & Eton Riverside, Twickenham, Ascot, Staines and Hounslow were unable to get to and from London Waterloo.This incident compounded the earlier delays across the whole of the network. While both incidents were managed as quickly as possible, many train crews were unable to reach their trains to begin or continue working, and the stock for the evening peak departures was unable to reach Waterloo. Many trains were therefore delayed departing Waterloo, and many were then unable to enter a platform at Waterloo.
To help with passenger movement, we quickly arranged for mutual ticket acceptance with First Great Western, Southern Trains, London Underground, LOROL and London Buses. Over 100m passenger journeys a year happen at London Waterloo, and Clapham Junction is Europe’s busiest interchange as such, we put in place a train plan which attempted to ensure that passenger numbers at London Waterloo, Vauxhall and Clapham Junction were moved as quickly as possible to avoid overcrowding.
We appreciate how frustrating it is when your train service doesn’t run as planned. We are very sorry for the disruption you experienced yesterday. We work very closely with the Samaritans and British Transport Police to help identify at-risk individuals to try to reduce the likelihood of incidents of the nature seen today. For more information on this work, please visit http://www.samaritans.org/your-community/saving-lives-railway/suicide-and-railways.
Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the man who died following the incident.
Image: © Shaun Adam
Image: © Terry Denness
Image: © Alan Milford
