COMMUTERS faced rush hour chaos as signalling problems delayed train services on the hottest day of the year.

Passengers on the c2c line were left in confusion after services became disrupted following a signal failure at West Ham station, in East London, at about 5.30pm on Wednesday afternoon.

Further issues were caused by a fault with a train at Upney station.

Trains travelling both to and from Shoebury were delayed by up to 30 minutes, or cancelled altogether, while engineers from Network Rail frantically attempted to resolve the problems.

Some commuters were asked to get off at stations such as Laindon while those onboard carriages complained about a lack of air conditioning as temperatures soared above 25 degrees celsius.

Alice Skeats, from Westcliff, who was stuck on one of the trains, said there seemed to be a case of no one knowing what was going on.

Miss Skeats said: “We got stuck outside West Ham, then at Barking. We were told the train was diverting to Pitsea, then Tilbury – which would be going back on itself.

“Loads of people got off in confusion, then the train pulled away and the driver said we would be going straight to Pitsea, bypassing all stations. Then we couldn’t stop at Pitsea, then we could again.

“It got to the point were even the train driver said she didn’t know what was going on, everyone is just so confused.”

Extra trains were put on after 7pm to help clear some of the backlog which had built up because of the maintainance problems.

A spokeswoman for c2c said: “We worked with Network Rail to resolve the issues and would like to apologise to our passengers.

“Anyone who has experienced air conditioning problems in their carriage should contact our customer services team on 0845 6014873 quoting the five digit number inside the carriage, which is the unique carriage number.”