A night of travel woes left train passengers waiting in the rain for rail replacement buses that never arrived.

Those returning from London on Monday night had to wait for buses at Brighton Station to get to Hove and Worthing after their train arrived just after midnight.

James Tong and his partner Dana Vortkamp, who had been in London seeing the band The Pretty Reckless, were among more than 30 people waiting.

Mr Tong said: “It was not ideal, as it was quite cold and starting to rain but we're British, queuing is our national sport.

“The Southern Rail employee organising matters was radioing somebody every few minutes for updates - they in turn were relaying that the bus was only a few minutes away.”

Eventually Southern Rail provided taxi services at 01.17am so travellers could continue their journey nearly an hour after arriving at the station.

He added that despite the grumbles and discontent from the passengers, he and Dana felt they were the lucky ones as they only had to go to their home in Hove while some had to travel to Worthing.

He also said that he wanted to praise the Southern Rail employee at the station who did his best to keep the passengers informed.

A spokesman for Southern Rail said: ““Late night engineering works meant that replacement buses were provided between Brighton and Worthing in the early hours of March 25.

“Unfortunately, the company we use to provide these buses failed to provide the 00.30 service from Brighton. We provided taxis for passengers who were due to catch this bus.

“We would like to apologise to those passengers who were expecting to board this bus and were inconvenienced.”

The bus company that was supposed to lay on the replacement service was Crawley Luxury Coaches, but they told The Argus an order was never received.