RAIL passengers travelling from West Dorset to London suffered major delays yesterday because of ice on the line.

An amended timetable was operated by South West Trains with fewer trains than usual on all routes in and out of Waterloo.

Trains from Weymouth were delayed by around an hour while the 14:05 Waterloo to Weymouth service was adjusted to a 16:04 Bournemouth to Weymouth service because of the poor weather conditions. The company apologised to passengers and offered a full ticket refund for customers affected by yesterday’s disruption.

Passengers were permitted to use their tickets on alternate First Great Western, London Underground, Southern and London Bus routes.

Jake Kelly, customer service director for the South West Trains-Network Rail Alliance said: “We would like to apologise to our customers for the disruption that was experienced across our network.

“In common with other transport operators, our services had been badly affected by freezing weather conditions yesterday morning. We believe it’s only right that we offer affected customers full compensation for the delays they experienced yesterday.”

“The amended timetable we put in place allowed us to provide greater certainty for our customers about the services we were able to run and when.”