Power outages in south west London caused disruption on the London Underground as stations closed, gates and display boards were left without power and passengers were severely delayed.
The Bakerloo, Mildmay and Waterloo & City lines were suspended, and there were severe delays on the Piccadilly, Jubilee and Elizabeth lines.
Chris Date was trying to get home to north London from Waterloo, one of the worst London Underground stations affected by the power outage.
Date said: “Underground staff [were] diverting passengers to buses outside, or just waiting in hope the gates would reopen.
“There was a power surge reported which caused a number of assets across London Underground to fail.”
A notice board at Earl’s Court station read: “Due to a power failure, the gates in Earl’s Court road ticket hall are not working to touch in.”
The power outage reportedly happened at 2.30pm this afternoon.
A Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said the outage occurred due to a National Grid issue, leading everything to shut down for a matter of minutes.
The spokesperson added: “When the power goes out the trains will have stopped.
“We’ve cleared some stations.
“Because there’s no electricity it might not necessarily be safe for them to open.”
South Kensington and Embankment were among the Underground stations which were forced to closed.
TfL’s chief operating officer Claire Mann said: “Due to a brief interruption of the power supply to our network, several lines lost power for a short period earlier this afternoon.
“We apologise to customers whose journeys will have been affected.
“We are working to get the whole network up and running again as quickly as possible.”
The National Grid apologised for the fault.
A spokesperson said the fault was resolved within seconds and did not interrupt supply from the network.
They added a voltage dip might have briefly affected power supplies on the low-voltage distribution network in the area.
A small contained fire was caused by a cable fault.
Feature image credit: Jack Darlington
