Commuters evacuate after 'fireball' explosion on train

 People evacuated a train in ‘panic’ after two explosions rocked the carriage in southwest London.

Commuter journeys were disrupted on the South Western Railway line between Shepperton and Waterloo after a fire exploded underneath the carriage this morning.

Metro’s Adam Williamson was on board the train with his young daughter when the incident happened at about 10.20am while they were stopped at Fulwell station near Twickenham.

After evacuating with a pram, a second explosion rocked the train right where they had been sitting some minutes before.

He said: ‘We were riding near the front of the front carriage. Suddenly, there was a bang, but I didn’t immediately think too much of it.

‘Then there were two inspectors who were sitting down near us, and they suddenly jumped up and panicked.

‘They said there was smoke, and I then saw it right next to us.

‘We left the carriage at the other end just as smoke was coming off.

‘There was then a second bang and the fireball came out.’

He said it looked like a ‘ball of fire’ before thick smoke began billowing from the carriage.

The dad said he couldn’t help but think about what could have happened if the inspectors had not been at the front of the train.

‘I wonder what would have happened if those two inspectors hadn’t been there, it might have taken a little longer to dawn on me that there was smoke.  

‘What if I just carried on sitting there and we were caught out in the subsequent bang?’

SWR told Metro: ‘We are investigating a problem with a train at Fulwell, which is believed to be related to the train’s electrical supply. Smoke was reported, however, there has been no report of a fire and there are no injuries.

‘As a precaution, customers were asked to leave the train and power to the track was switched off. While our teams investigate, services are not running between Teddington and Shepperton.’

Some lines in the area are blocked after the incident, and journeys are likely to take longer until 1pm, the operator said.

Elsewhere, trains face major disruption between London Liverpool Street, Stansted Airport, Hertford and Cambridgeshire after a signal fault in Broxbourne.

Some lines on the route are blocked after the issue this morning shortly before 6am.

Trains may be cancelled or delayed by up to an hour, National Rail warned.

Disruption from the fault is expected to last at least until 2pm, but this could be revised.

Meanwhile, the National Rail website is one of countless websites hit by an outage after Amazon Web Services crashed.

People trying to access the National Rail enquiries website are currently seeing a 404 error page.

The technical issue means the information displayed may be out of date, National Rail said.

The London Underground is also reporting delays after a signal failure and a fire alert.

The Northern line has severe delays due to a signal failure at Stockwell, while the District line is partially suspended between Parsons Green and Wimbledon following a fire alert at Southfields.