Southeastern delays: twenty trains to London cancelled - a day after firm is named among worst in UK

Commuters were left furious after more than 20 trains into London were cancelled or delayed during the Thursday morning rush hour.

Regular Southeastern services from stations between Ashford International and the capital were held back for around an hour and a half after overrunning engineering works left lines without power.

Travellers arrived at stations along the route to find all peak-time trains into London cancelled. Some faced a two-hour wait for their next service.

A spokesman for Southeastern said services were back up and running before 8am, following the power issue between Maidstone East and Swanley, but commuters could still expect "knock-on" delays through the morning.

He said: "Services were affected by power supply problems due to overrunning engineering works, which were supposed to be finished on time today.

"They are back to normal now, but there will be knock-on delays. We advise passengers to check updates online."

Some commuters took to social media to vent their fury.

Sue Jones (@SueJ1973) tweeted: "@Se-Railway so, my train is late every day so far this year, & today, for variety, you cancel it! Shocking service as per usual..."

The problem comes a day after research found Southeastern to be one of the worst ranked train lines for passenger satisfaction.

A Transport Focus survey revealed that only 75% of passengers considered themselves satisfied with their services, closely following Thameslink, which had the lowest proportion of satisfied customers (73%).

Third worst was Southern, coming in third at 78%.

But despite the poor ratings for all three south England lines, the survey showed an overall rise in the score nationally - from 73% last year to 76% this year.

First Hull Trains rated the highest at 97% customer satisfaction.

The Southeastern spokesman added: “We apologise to passengers who were affected by the overrunning engineering work between Maidstone East and Otford earlier today. Network Rail worked hard to hand back the line as quickly as they could and the line was re-opened at 07:00. However, services via Swanley were disrupted until around 08:00. We advise passengers who were disrupted by more than 30 minutes to claim compensation under our Delay Repay compensation scheme.”