BELEAGUERED Farnham commuters, fresh from being told their season tickets will break the £4,000 mark next year, were left stranded and scattered across the South Western Railway (SWR) network on Monday following a line-side fire near Waterloo.

SWR urged passengers to avoid travelling by train at all after the incident just after 11am, which sent the network into meltdown and left hundreds of commuters stranded for hours at Waterloo just as overnight temperatures were predicted to drop as low as minus 12.

Passengers endured long delays due to the train cancellations on all services and the disruption continued until the early evening on the following day.

The crowd waiting for trains on the concourse at Waterloo was so great that at around 6pm on Monday all the entrances were closed, causing even more confusion. The crush was equally bad at Clapham Junction, where many mainline services from Waterloo had been forced to terminate.

Abandoning hope off getting home by train, some Farnham residents resorted to sharing taxis, while others seeking to travel towards London were frustrated to see trains departing Farnham station for Woking without allowing passengers to board.

For those lucky to find space on a train heading in the right direction, their misery was compounded by a lack of heating on many services.

And to make matters even worse, all three ticket machines at Farnham station were out of order on Monday due to a technical fault with card-reading equipment which affected stations across the country.

Angry commuters took to social media to vent their frustrations, with many bemoaning the lack of information and advice, and conflicting messages offered by SWR staff online and at station platforms.

One said: “SWR any chance you can update us on when an Alton train will be leaving Waterloo station as the last four have been cancelled. Would love to tell the family when I’m due home?”

Others accused SWR of “deserting” passengers and in a further Twitter exchange, SWR told one Farnham-bound commuter stuck at Waterloo that getting to Clapham Junction “would be a good choice”, only to be reprimanded by another responding: “Why are you telling people this? We have just been told this is wrong by your staff at Clapham Junction. Trains arriving stuffed full and told to go back to Waterloo.”

Typifying the hysteria at finding a train heading home, another wrote: “In the two hours of standing looking at the boards (which all had delayed or cancelled the whole time) a voice came over the tannoy saying they had one train leaving calling at Woking and Farnham only. I ran! I ran for my life. Climbing over bodies!”

Some attempted to travel down the Alton line station by station, but passengers heading to Alton were irked to find their trains terminate at Farnham and no rail replacement buses in place to take them onwards.

Apologising for the disruption Tuesday morning, SWR managing director Andy Mellors and Network Rail Wessex managing director Becky Lumlock said: “Yesterday, a line-side fire outside London Waterloo caused damage to the signalling system.

“This led to track circuit failures on three of the main lines to and from London Waterloo, which are the parts of the signalling system that monitor the presence of trains on sections of track.

“This caused large amounts of delays, and many alterations and cancellations were made across the network to manage the overall service.”