South Western Railway (SWR), one of Britain's biggest train operators, on Monday only saw half of its trains running, after a British rail union started 27 days of strikes.

The cancellations brought a more arduous rush hour for hundreds of thousands of commuters.

Passengers were forced to queue outside some stations while others crammed onto trains on the first day of the strikes over the role of guards on a new generation of trains.

The strikes started on a morning of freezing temperatures in Britain and are expected to last 27 days in December, forcing commuters to face a difficult festive month of travelling.

At the same time, technical problems caused further delays to the heavily reduced timetable.

The walkouts by the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union are the longest strike in the UK history of the railway.

The industrial actions are expected to affect more than 600,000 passengers a day and all routes to and from mainline Waterloo in central London, the busiest station in Britain. More than 17,000 trains are expected to be cancelled.

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