Gas leak disrupts London railway service

January 18, 2006 London, UK -- Commuters in the South East today discovered that it's not only problems at Clapham Junction that can cause disruption to more travellers from more than one of the major London stations. A single gas leak near Battersea Park Junction interrupted services to and from both Waterloo and Victoria stations, the 2 main termini covering the areas "south of the river" in the metropolis.

The incident occurred around lunchtime, with trains being cancelled and delayed, and even once the leak had been repaired, the knock-on effects from the earlier disruptions caused delays to peak hour commuters returning home.

The situation was not aided by differential information being made available on travel news sources, a phenomenon that has become a familiar story since the once-unified British Rail was split up into an infrastructure operator and a number of different Train Operating Companies (TOCs).