Commuters describe journey as being more of an ordeal than during tube strikes

This Wednesday morning (4 November) was a miserable one for Putney public transport users with both rail and tube services struggling to cope with the number of passengers.

Crowds outside East Putney tube station. Picture: @nicole_jolley

Passengers queued out onto the street simply to gain entry to East Putney station on London Underground. Long term users of the service from this station said they had never seen overcrowding as bad as this.

At the mainline station at Putney, passengers towards Waterloo found themselves unable to board as trains were so crowded. There were complaints that trains with only five carriages were serving the station between 8am-9am and they were arriving fully loaded. Users of the station said that the experience of travelling this morning was worse than during a tube strike.

@SW_Trains yet again no room on train for anyone to get on at Putney ... Are you happy with this kind of non-service pic.twitter.com/hJGEF7U7Tt

— Thom (@thomasdbarrett) November 4, 2015

There were also some reported minor delays on the local Thames Clipper service.

As yet there seems to be no apparent explanation for the level of disruption in Putney. There have been no problems of this degree reported from other parts of the network nearby and for some reason Putney seems to have been disproportionately impacted.

A spokesperson for TfL said there were some delays on the District line this morning because of a signal failure at Upney and that they would investigate further why things were so bad at East Putney.

A spokesperson for South West Trains told us a train arriving at Putney during the rush hour should have been a 10-car train - which is made up of two 5-car units joined together. Unfortunately, one half had an electrical fault so was only 5 cars.

November 5, 2015