ALMOST half (45 per cent) of all South Western Railway services have failed to turn up on time since the operator took over the franchise last August.

The issue reached new heights recently when a beleaguered band of around 50 passengers were left stranded at Farnham railway station in the early hours of last Sunday morning (April 15).

Services across the South Western Railway network were disrupted from around 8pm on that Saturday into Sunday morning after an “emergency incident” blocked the line between Woking and Surbiton.

This led to great confusion at Farnham, where passengers complained of contradicting messages from South Western Railway staff online and on the platform - with the company informing commuters on Twitter that taxis were “on their way” while passengers claimed station staff told them to “get our own cabs and ‘try to claim’ after”.

“Station staff have no clue what’s going on,” said one Twitter user, while at 1.42am another wrote: “Help, you’ve left about 50 people abandoned at Farnham on a train that was meant for Alton? Any plans to get us home?”

It comes after South Western Railway’s latest customer report summary - covering the seven-month period since it took over the franchise from South West Trains in August 2017 - revealed that just 83 per cent of trains met Network Rail’s ‘public performance measure’, arriving at their terminating station within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long-distance services.

In addition, just 55 per cent of services arrived at the ‘right time’, whereas six per cent were delayed by 15 minutes or more, thus qualifying for South Western Railway’s ‘delay repay’ scheme, and almost four per cent were cancelled entirely.

In a separate survey by the BBC published this week, South Western Railway was found to be the second worst culprit for missing scheduled stops at stations, with an average of 11-in-every-1,000 services missing stations.

Responding, the operator apologised to passengers for the delays, commenting that its recent performance levels “are not what you expect or deserve from us”.

But, deflecting the blame, it added that performance “has been in decline for a number of years” and said it is working with Network Rail, which manages the track and signalling infrastructure, to reduce the number of incidents and “recover more quickly when things do go wrong”.

The operator continued: “We were disappointed but not surprised that we didn’t meet some of our targets. The last few months have been a very challenging time, with a number of incidents which have caused major disruption to your journeys.”

South Western Railway’s performance figures have prompted Mike Roberts, a member of the Alton Line Users’ Association and Labour councillor for Aldershot, to write to the Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald.

In his letter, Mr Roberts said South Western Railway’s “poor or even grim” record “clearly shows that the failure is endemic by them and Network Rail”, finally urging the shadow cabinet member to “raise this at the highest level”.

It also comes after South Western Railway increased rail fares increased by an average 3.3 per cent on January 2 - taking the price of a season ticket from Farnham to London above £4,000.