A BELEAGUERED band of around 50 passengers were left stranded at Farnham railway station in the early hours of last Sunday morning - just days after it was revealed almost half (45.3 per cent) of all South Western Railway (SWR) services have failed to turn up on time since the operator took over the franchise last August.

Services across the SWR network were disrupted from around 8pm on the Saturday into Sunday morning after an emergency incident blocked the line between Woking and Surbiton.

This led to great confusion at Farnham, where passengers complained of contradicting messages from SWR staff online and on the platform - with the company informing commuters on Twitter that taxis were “on their way” while passengers claimed station staff told them to “get our own cabs and ‘try and claim’ after”.

“Station staff have no clue what’s going on”, fumed one Twitter user, while another wrote despairingly at 1.42am: “Help you’ve left about 50 people abandoned at Farnham on a train that was meant for Alton? Any plans to get us home?”

It comes after SWR’s latest Customer Report Summary - covering the seven month period since it took over the franchise from South West Trains in August 2017 - revealed that just 83.2 per cent of trains met Network Rail’s ‘public performance measure’, arriving at their terminating station within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services.

In addition, just 54.7 per cent of services arrived at the ‘right time’, whereas six per cent were delayed by 15 minutes or more thus qualifying for SWR’s ‘Delay Repay’ scheme, and 3.83 per cent were cancelled entirely.

In a separate survey by the BBC published this week, SWR was found to be the second worst culprit for missing scheduled stops at stations, with an average of 11 in every 1,000 services missing stations.

Responding, the operator apologised to passengers for the delays, commenting that its recent performance levels “are not what you expect or deserve from us”.

But, deflecting the blame, it added performance “has been in decline for a number of years” and said it is working with Network Rail, which manages the track and signalling infrastructure, to reduce the number of incidents and “recover more quickly when things do go wrong”.

The operator continued: “We were disappointed, but not surprised that we didn’t meet some of our targets. The last few months have been a very challenging time, with a number of incidents which have caused major disruption to your journeys.”

SWR’s performance figures have prompted Mike Roberts, a member of the Alton Line Users Association and Labour councillor for Aldershot, to write to the Shadow Transport Secretary, Andy McDonald.

In his letter, Mr Roberts said SWR’s “poor or even grim” record “clearly shows that the failure is endemic by them and Network Rail”, finally urging the shadow cabinet member to “raise this at the highest level”.

It also comes after SWR increased rail fares increased by an average 3.3 per cent on January 2 - taking the price of a season ticket from Farnham to London above £4,000.