It's official, South Central Trains has proved it is totally incapable of providing any sort of reliable service.

My latest nightmare journey involved leaving London Bridge on the 17.45 Eastbourne train.

Ten minutes later, myself and 800 other passengers were to be held captive for the next three hours on the latest defective train from South Central's brand new rolling stock.

The whole episode was very unpleasant and resulted in people fainting due to the heat and lack of ventilation and passengers eventually being forced to use the emergency levers to open the doors.

When these trains were initially rolled out to a trumpet fanfare, we were promised many improvements, including increased reliability.

How is it then that during the last 12 months of deployment, I have experienced about 40 to 50 electrical failures on these trains?

Of course, you can expect some sort of running issues with any new equipment but for public services to be continually disrupted even a year down the line is totally unacceptable.

Most of these failures appear to be to do with the door mechanisms.

Does South Central have any sort of service level agreement for these trains that have cost millions of pounds to buy? Perhaps they were purchased with insufficient maintenance contracts?

Certainly, the sight of angry passengers and yellow-coated engineers scratching their heads with no clue as to what the problem is, is an all-too-familiar sight at Brighton Station. It is time someone started asking some serious questions as to the inability of South Central Trains to operate this route.

-Andrew Charity, Brighton