Desperate times call for desperate measures. And there was no more desperate a time than Tuesday night at just after 7pm at Brighton station.

Has a train station outside of London ever been closed because of passenger congestion? It’s hard to find an example.

But that was the terrible occurrence in our city as hundreds of people were locked out by police as the concourse inside became cramped with other passengers waiting for trains to arrive.

People fainted, children cried and tempers flared. Welcome to Brighton please come again soon!

There was a combination of factors that didn’t help. Huge numbers of day trippers headed for our beach on the first real day of summer, almost like a burst dam of sun seekers.

But the real problem remains our hopelessly inadequate train service.

Inept Southern Rail and its hapless managers who seem incapable of running a rota, a laissez faire government which allowed the company to cut its timetable even further and finally an unbending union taking sick days as industrial action.

These are all the factors that have caused misery for commuters and as yet uncalculated damage to our economy.

Tuesday was the last straw. We now demand immediate action from the government if that means, as suggested by the Mayor of London, removing the franchise from Southern and passing it to Transport for London so be it.

As we say desperate times call for desperate measures.