Christmas travel chaos as flooding causes trains across UK to be cancelled and delayed

Some rail passengers urged not to travel as one of busiest days of year beset by disruption

At Victoria station in central London, a choir greeted a straggle of arriving passengers with “Joy to the World”.

But for many commuters, and travellers heading further afield, the final Friday before Christmas was anything but joyous.

“It’s been a nightmare,” said Camilla Simpson, one of tens of thousands of travellers who encountered chaos on one of the busiest days of the year as a result of flooding in Sussex.

“I started in Haywards Heath at 10am, and usually I’d be at London Victoria in 45 minutes.

“I arrived at the station to find replacement bus services – or rather a lack of.

“It took an hour to get to Three Bridges. Then I had to wait for a train to Gatwick.

“Two-and-a-half hours for a 45-minute journey? Not ideal.”

Compared with many other travellers, Ms Simpson was relatively fortunate – her journey was relatively short.

Hundreds of airline passengers missed flights from Gatwick as both road and rail approaches from the south to the airport were closed – with the M23 south of Crawley resembling a linear lake.

Chaos began to build early on one of the busiest days of the winter for travellers.

The London-Gatwick-Brighton main railway line, which is one of the most intensively used in Europe, was closed south of the airport because of overnight flooding in the Balcombe Tunnel.

Southern told passengers: “The Balcombe area is currently flooded. Due to the consistent rainfall, the water level has reached rail level height, this means trains are not able to to travel over the track.

“We strongly advise to not travel at this time.”

One Twitter user wrote: “Brighton cut off. Send avocados.”

While Network Rail teams tackled the deluge, other problems developed across Britain.

On Friday morning, trains between Exeter and Taunton were temporarily halted because of floods. A landslip at Liss in Hampshire blocked the main line from London Waterloo to Portsmouth.

The current month-long strike by members of the RMT union involved in a dispute with South Western Railway had already halved the usual service. The landslip reduced it to zero.

East Midlands Railway passengers may have sensed something of a localised Bermuda triangle after heavy rain with trains between Nottingham, Loughborough and Derby “no longer able to run, as the flood water levels have risen”.

In Yorkshire, meanwhile, problems were being caused by a shortage of train crew – which has bedevilled Northern Rail passengers since the timetable change last weekend – exacerbated by a broken-down train near Sheffield and an “object stuck in the overhead wires” near Bingley in West Yorkshire.

By nightfall, Southern Rail was reporting that the line between London and Brighton had reopened – but warned: “Even though trains are now able to run, delays and short notice cancellations are still expected to occur.

“Disruption is expected to continue until the end of the day.”