Commuter chaos as Paddington is closed

Thousands of mainline rail commuters suffered travel chaos coming into London today.

A major power failure at Ladbroke Grove at the start of the morning peak period prevented local and long-distance services from entering or leaving Paddington station, which is used by more than 60,000 people a day.

Local Thames Trains services were being terminated at Ealing Broadway as Railtrack engineers worked to rectify the problem.

It was not known how long this would take.

A fault with the power supply which in turn knocked out the signals occurred at 6.30am.

London Underground was accepting mainline tickets at Ealing Broadway for those stranded passengers who then transferred to the Tube.

Meanwhile, an incident on the line at Reading caused more severe disruption for Thames Trains services between Basingstoke and Reading this morning.