Commuters faced rail misery last night as a fire brought all trains on the London-Brighton line to a halt.

The blaze broke out near tracks at Selhurst just after noon and quickly spread close to the rails.

Firefighters asked for the electricity on the lines to be cut off after they found highly-flammable propane gas cylinders near the flames.

The power went down between Balham and East Croydon at 12.58pm, leaving some passengers trapped on trains which had been stopped between stations.

All services to and from Brighton and the capital were cancelled for almost an hour.

Just before 2pm, trains were rerouted via Crystal Palace and London Bridge but the backlog from the earlier disruption meant lengthy delays.

The power was switched back on to allow normal services to resume at 3.10pm but both South Central and Thameslink said the impact of the fire lasted several hours.

Most evening services were running between 45 minutes and one hour late.

A spokesman for Thameslink said it was confident trains would be running normally by this morning.