Furious passengers marched off a Southend-bound delayed train - forcing other trains to cut their speed to avoid an accident.

As passengers walked along the railway track, train drivers on the line between London Liverpool Street and Southend had to slow down in case commuters strayed into their path.

The dangerous incident took place last night on the 7.04pm service from Liverpool Street via Wickford and Billericay to Southend.

Passengers staged the walkout between the Harold Wood and Brentwood stations when the service was delayed by a broken down train ahead. With up to 1,000 passengers on the train, a "handful" of travellers decided to walk on the tracks and make their own way to their destination.

A spokesman for rail operator First Great Eastern said: "We had problems with delays as a result of two trains that were held up - one was a passenger train and one was a freight train.

"For reasons best known to themselves, passengers chose to open the doors manually and other trains had to be cautioned. What prompted these people to do that, we really don't know. It was certainly a very unusual course of action."

The spokesman said the service had only been delayed for around 15 minutes but because passengers started walking on the track, further delays were caused.

He said: "It had a knock-on effect on that train and a few others, delaying them for over an hour. Because of this incident, delays were made much longer than they would have been.

"We really don't have a good idea of how many people were involved but we are only really talking about a handful of passengers."

He added: "We would obviously discourage such behaviour except in the situation of dire emergencies. They put themselves and others at risk."

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