SOUTH West Trains has apologised after passengers were delayed for hours yesterday following failed line works.

The problem started on Tuesday evening with signalling problems between Winchester and Basingstoke but the problems continued to cause travel misery for rail passengers througout Thursday.

A statement said: “We are sorry for the significant disruption that many of you will have encountered between Weymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and London Waterloo yesterday.

“We took immediate action to rectify the problem, including bringing in specialists to work closely with our engineers. Our teams worked extremely hard overnight and continued throughout the day on November 13 to try and repair the problem as quickly as possible.

“There are multiple issues affecting signalling which means they are failing to work as they normally do. As a result, we introduced a process to enable trains to move past signals manually. This is obviously far slower, but essential for safety.

“The number of trains that were able to run through the affected area had to be reduced as trains take between 30 to 60 minutes longer than usual to clear each signal section. As a result, our trains were exceptionally busy and some didn't stop at certain stations to enable us to keep services moving.

“We understand and appreciate that your journey yesterday was far more difficult than it should be and we are very sorry for this.

“Our engineering team have continued to work on resolving the problem throughout the night.”