Power is now back on at Sutton station after a blackout yesterday plunged journeys into chaos.

Southern Rail, who operate the station, have flatly refused to respond to any press requests to explain the reason for the outage.

Staff at the station blamed workmen for the failure, accusing them of accidently damaging a cable outside the front entrance.

The power cut saddled Oyster customers with potentially huge charges, as it shut down receivers needed for them to register the end of their journeys.

UK Power Networks, who maintain electricity cables across parts of London, were called in to reverse the failure.

A spokesperson from the firm said: "UK Power Networks was called at 8am yesterday regarding an interruption to power supplies at Sutton train station.

"Having arrived quickly at the site our engineers worked to identify and fix the fault and power was fully restored to the station at 01:24 this morning.”