DELAYS getting train drivers to work by taxi caused fresh disruption on Wednesday, continuing a week of misery for rail passengers.

Travellers were warned of delays and cancellations to services on the Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink networks.

A statement said: "As part of the planning process, Govia Thameslink Railway often have to use taxis throughout a driver's shift to position them from one place to another so trains can get from A to B.

"This often is the case to enable drivers to be in position before the first trains of the day and when trains go in and out of their depots, and where drivers still have additional journeys left on their shifts to complete.

"Unfortunately, however, the taxi provider this morning had suffered a major failure of their booking system and as such a large number of drivers were out of their correct positions or severely late-running as a result.

"This affected drivers across all of the Govia Thameslink Railway network and, as a result, disruption has been caused to Southern, Thameslink and Great Northern services.

GTR are working hard with their transport provider to get things back on track and are doing what they can to ensure that trains are able to run with the resources available to them.

"The initial peak services this morning have however been affected, and services are likely to be altered at short notice.

"They are working hard to get drivers back to where they need to be so that they can get back to their scheduled services as soon as possible."

The problem followed two days of travel chaos for customers of South Western Railway.

Thousands of people waited for hours at London's Waterloo station on Tuesday evening after a fire under a train and other issues crippled services.

A GTR spokesman said: "First thing each morning, many of our drivers travel by taxi from their work station to the engineering depot where the train they are bringing into service has been stabled and worked on overnight. This is standard practice.

"This morning, the company we use to book taxis appeared to suffer a major failure of its booking system and taxis failed to arrive. There was no warning.

"We used local cab firms where we could, but with trains not leaving their start point on time, this has caused disruption across the GTR network of Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern for which we sincerely apologise.

"We are talking to the taxi booking firm to understand how this happened and doing everything we can to rearrange our resources to get the service back on track as soon as possible."