Pregnant passenger slams train company over four-hour delay

Emma Firth, 35, was trying to get home to Farnham in Surrey from London on Thursday night when services ground to a halt after signalling equipment was vandalised.

She joined a train at Clapham Junction at 6.30pm and did not get home until 11.30pm, four hours later than she expected.

Scores of trains ground to a halt during the evening, some without power, stranding thousands of passengers for hours.

Ms Firth, who is eight months pregnant with her first child, said her train was making slow progress and eventually came to a complete stop close to Woking station in surrey, with the guard announcing that there were signalling problems.

For the next two and three-quarter hours the train remained stationary, with the guard saying he did not have any information about how long the problem would last.

“It was starting to look as though we would be on the train all night. There was no food or drink available and I hadn’t eaten for hours,” she said.

“We gathered that the power had been turned off at 9.30pm and that lots of people had been walking along the track, so I thought I may as well give it a go. A door had been opened, so someone gave me a piggyback off the train onto the tracks and a few of us started walking. I could see the station about half-a-mile away and there was a walkway near the tracks.

“We saw a Network Rail employee who was very helpful, shining his torch to help us, and we were then approached by a British Transport Police officer who threatened us with arrest, asking for our details and implying we were trespassing. But what could we do?”

Her husband James drove to Woking to meet her, and she eventually got home at 11.30pm.

Ms Firth, a journalist, added: “The most frustrating thing was the lack of information about how long we were going to be on the train. If there had been some kind of timescale given I would have stayed on the train.

“South West Trains handled it badly. They shouldn’t have let so many trains leave Waterloo when there was obviously a problem.”