10:22am Wednesday 14th April 2010
By Joanna Kilvington
Commuters faced a nightmare journey as they travelled to work this morning after a lorry struck a level crossing barrier in Barnes.
A skip lorry hit the barrier in Vine Road at about 7.40am, causing delays of up to 30 minutes on South West Trains (SWT) services between Reading and London Waterloo, and Weybridge and London Waterloo via Chertsey.
British Transport Police (BTP) and officers from the Metropolitan Police were at the scene to direct traffic while engineers from Network Rail fixed the damaged gates.
A BTP spokeswoman said: “Initial reports suggest that the lorry struck the barriers before immediately leaving the scene.
“If you saw this incident or are the skip lorry driver then we urge you to come forward and contact us.
“When used responsibly, level crossings are perfectly safe and this incident has resulted in delays to motorists wanting to use the crossing.”
SWT apologised for the delays and said it hoped normal services would resume by 11am.
A SWT spokesman said: "Some SWT services were disrupted this morning following an incident about 7.40am when a lorry struck and damaged a level crossing barrier near Barnes station.
“We would like to apologise to passengers for the disruption. We have been liaising closely with Network Rail, which completed repairs to the level crossing barrier around 9.30am."
Anyone who has any information about the incident is asked to contact BTP on freephone 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference 82 of 14/04/2010.
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