Safety system issue causes train delays

South West Trains said in a statement the issue prevented two trains being in the same section of track at the same time between Havant and Guildford.

Services running through these stations were delayed by up to 20 minutes or revised.

The statement said the problem started on Wednesday morning when a signalling problem showed incorrectly a train was on a section of track preventing another service occupying the same section.

To allow trains to use the track safely, staff manually checked the track and verbally advised each train.

The statement added: ‘Our engineers were unable to investigate the problems during the day Wednesday without completely blocking the line in both directions.

‘Our control room made the decision to continue running services as delayed.

‘Investigation works occurred overnight and our team were not able to identify the root cause of the faults.

‘As such the process of manually checking each section of track continued yesterday, this resulted in delays and alterations.

‘Engineers remained on site yesterday and were working hard to rectify the problem.’