Southern blamed “multiple incidents” for another evening of delays and cancellations affecting thousands of people trying make their way home to Brighton and Hove last night (Thursday 19 October).
Tempers became so heated at London Victoria that police were called to deal with what the train company said was “a passenger disturbance on platform 17”.
The “altercation” started when it became obvious that no more passengers could be squeezed on to the delayed 10.47pm to Hove.
One passenger said: “It makes a sardine can seem spacious.”
A number of Brighton trains had been cancelled by this point but at East Croydon all passengers heading for Hove and Portslade were ordered off one of the night’s final services.
Southern said that there had been “multiple incidents across our network this evening”.
The company said that it had to carry out emergency engineering work at West Croydon – just hours after emergency engineering work had to be carried out between Redhill and Purley.
It said that there was a trespasser on the line in South Croydon and that someone had pulled the emergency stop cord at Streatham.
There were also a number of train faults, Southern said, adding that there were also crew shortages and some staff had been displaced during the disruption.
The chaos came just four days after all the electronic ticket machines went down at Brighton and Hove stations.
