Passengers face a spate of disruption on the rail network today after an explosion on a train and major signalling issues.
Commuters on the South Western Railway line between Shepperton and Waterloo were forced to evacuate after a fire exploded underneath the carriage this morning.
Metro’s Adam Williamson was on board the train with his young daughter when the fire broke out at about 10.30am when they were stopped at Fulwell station near Twickenham, southwest London.
He said: ‘We were riding near the front of the front carriage. Suddenly, there was a bang, but I didn’t immediately think too much of it.
‘Then there were two inspectors who were sitting down near us, and they suddenly jumped up and panicked.
‘They said there was smoke, and I then saw it right next to us.
‘We left the carriage at the other end just as smoke was coming off.
‘There was then a second bang and the fireball came out.’
He said it looked like a ‘ball of fire’ before thick smoke began billowing from the carriage.
SWR told Metro it is investigating a fault with a train at Fulwell, but no fire has been reported.
Elsewhere, trains face major disruption between London Liverpool Street, Stansted, Hertford and Cambridgeshire after a signal fault in Broxbourne.
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Some lines on the route are blocked after the issue this morning shortly before 6am.
Trains may be cancelled or delayed by up to an hour, National Rail warned.
Disruption from the fault is expected to last at least until 1pm.
Meanwhile, the National Rail website is one of countless websites hit by an outage after Amazon Web Services crashed.
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