Staff at St Albans station "drink tea" and "refuse to make announcements about delays because it's too early", a railway professional has claimed.

The first Thameslink train into London from Bedford on Sunday, January 4, failed to continue its journey from St Albans.

Phil Marsh, chief correspondent for the Railway Magazine, was on the 5.40am train into London St Pancras. He said: "The train terminated at St Albans due to an unspecified fault.

"It arrived at 6.26am and passengers were told to get off and wait on the platform as the train has a fault.

"The temperature was below freezing and we had to wait 29 minutes until another train arrived. The 29 minutes were marked by around 100 passengers not being given any information other than Network Rail was doing engineering work, which had absolutely no effect on the failed train."

The 60-year-old from Milton Keynes described how the station staff were in their office, which has a glass fronted window on to the platform drinking tea and coke, whilst passengers, who were freezing, became irate at the lack of information being given.

Mr Marsh added: "As a railwayman of 41 years and a railway journalist, I asked the staff very quietly what the plan was and why there were no announcements.

"There was no plan as Network Rail had not told them what was going on so I suggested they contacted Thameslink Control to find out what was happening and that they should then make an announcement.

"I was told that it was too early to make an announcement, and then with immediate effect, the member of staff truned off his microphone, which allowed him to speak through the window. His lack of customer care was awful."

This incident occurred just a week after the Kings Cross and Paddington fiasco, where all or the majority of the trains were cancelled.

Roger Perkins for Thameslink said: "I apologise to all those passengers who were caught up in the cancellation. There are constraints on the times that we can use the PA system at St Albans where residents live in close proximity and this clearly applies to early in the morning on a Sunday.

"However, we would expect our staff to do their best to explain the situation to passengers face to face and will be investigating what happened."