Flooded railway station reopens

A city station has reopened after it was flooded by the heavy rainfall which brought down trees and left several Hampshire homes without power.

Network Rail shut down electricity at Southampton Central Station after the tracks were flooded. It reopened for business at about 1600 BST.

London to Weymouth and London to Poole services were terminated at Eastleigh, for South West Trains (SWT) buses.

Meanwhile, power has been restored to 100 homes in Wimborne and Southampton.

"The water is a couple of feet deep in the tracks"
Network Rail

Seventy properties were affected in Holt and Mannington in Wimborne and 30 households in Shirley in Southampton.

Trees that came down across Brockenhurst in the New Forest led SWT to divert its replacement buses as a precaution.

"The buses are running between Bournemouth and Southampton Airport/Eastleigh - bypassing Brockenhurst because of the trees down in the New Forest area," a spokesman for SWT said.

Network Rail, which had "people who deal with specific flooding issues on site" at Southampton Central railway station, said it received the first reports of flooding at about 0730 BST.

Earlier, a spokesman said: "The water is a couple of feet deep in the tracks.

"Because of the hill coming down from the city centre the drains are overflowing onto the tracks."

The company was forced to wait until the water subsided before they could assess the situation.

The spokesman added: "We will repair and test - where necessary - equipment that may have been affected by the water like signalling and points."

Network Rail told BBC News it would be two or three hours before services were back to normal.

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Network Rail
South West Trains
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites