South West trains: Compensation plan for travel chaos

Passengers stuck for up to four hours on trains out of Waterloo Station will be offered compensation.

Some 60 trains were affected by the signalling fault on Thursday evening. Services were halted near Woking, Surrey, after a possible cable theft.

Many passengers escaped by walking down lines, meaning further delays.

Now South West trains have said under the "highly unusual" circumstances they will pay compensation to delayed passengers.

The incident was not covered by the Passenger Charter.

But a spokesman for Stage Coach Group, which runs South West Trains, said: "We believe strongly that compensating customers is the right thing to do."

The level of compensation has not emerged.

Some passengers kept a tally of the number of hours they had been stuck on their train.

Emma Firth, from Farnham, who is eight months pregnant, was among the passengers who got off.

She said: "Me and another man talked to each other and said, 'This is our only chance.'

"In my condition I wasn't going to sleep overnight on a train, I had no food or drink.

"So the man gave me a piggy back off the train and helped me walk down the track."