There are finer sights, at this festive time of year, than the dilapidated, construction-bound Earlsfield railway station. It is a particularly unfavourable location at six o'clock on a Sunday morning, as ice grips the rails and the detritus of Saturday night revelry is thrown across the dirty platform by an Arctic wind.

The passengers that huddle here, wrapped like mummies against the cold, stare at the departure board as if they were Bletchley cryptographers decoding Enigma. The puzzle is intractable; the train has, according to the display, arrived, yet no such carriage has passed. The display cannot be at fault, it is manually revising arrival times constantly. Were any passenger to risk frostbite by operating his phone, he might navigate to the website of South West Trains, operators of services along this line. As his wait reaches forty-five minutes, he may query the company's claim of "meeting and exceeding the needs and expectations of our customers." In the end, gloomy expectations are indeed met, through the electronic harbinger of doom, the display board. "All trains are cancelled," it reads, "Please use an alternative route."

Such was the experience of travellers on the morning of December 18th. Many of these passengers will have experienced severe disruption for more than a week, as the litany of excuses from the train company grows ever more varied and improbable. The presence on the line of leaves, ice, workmen and the suicidal; the theft of inexplicably desirable cables, unspecified "signalling" issues, the refreshingly honest failure of staff to turn up for work. Not all of these can be deemed the fault of the operating company, but their lack of adequate response surely can.

Despite a much-vaunted Twitter launch, information is disseminated in such a slow, inaccurate fashion that it leaves customers more baffled than before. Passengers do not make alternative arrangements when delays of ten minutes are announced, yet are left seething when this proves to be false and they are still on the train an hour later. People will accept the odd technical fault as part and parcel of Britain's antiquated railways, but they will surely not forgive a total lack of assistance and empathy.

South West Trains are to increase their fares by, on average, 6.5% in the New Year, a rise it attributes to an unspecified "change in government policy". When faced with such swingeing increases, passengers will surely expect that the operator will at least know where its own trains are, if they exist at all, and be able to relay this information to those on overcrowded, freezing platforms.

Despite numerous requests, South West Trains failed to give any explanation or apology for the outrageous situation at Earlsfield on Sunday. The line stands on one of the key arteries into London; the operator is a key player at Europe's busiest station, Clapham Junction. The terrible service blights this area of London, reliant as it is on over ground transport. Residents need and deserve better.

Based on information supplied by Tom Clover.