A man's journey to and from work earlier this week has summed up what thousands of commuters went through as train lines went into a total meltdown.

Tom Lawrence travels from his home in Central Croydon to his workplace in Richmond every day.

But on the night of July 4 and continuing on to the next morning, he was left confused and in pain as trains across the network were cancelled and delayed due to a signalling fault.

Mr Lawrence's horrible journey started when he got to Victoria station just before 11pm.

"There were around 20 trains left on the departure board," he told the Croydon Guardian.

"All showing delayed, but I boarded the one that looked like it was going to leave first.

"We then got asked to move to another train as that one was cancelled but then announced to the whole station to go to platform 18.

"So thousands of people were trying to board one train which was extremely dangerous and then it got cancelled."

He said the group of passengers were then directed to six different trains before they finally left the station one hour later.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

"During the journey we were all packed on to the train, I was crushed against the doors and it very traumatic for everyone on board," Mr Lawrence said.

"There were children wanting to go home.

"A woman I was near wanted to go to the toilet because she said she had a bladder condition which meant she could not hold on.

"So we all tried to help her shuffle through to the toilet.

"She then got there and the toilet was out of order and she had to wet herself."

He finally got to East Croydon station at 1.45am, where he found himself queuing for 20 minutes just to leave.

But just like everyone else, he had to wake up again on Thursday morning and do it all over again.

It took him two hours to get to Clapham Junction and said a fight even broke out because of all the shoving that went on.

"Overall it's just a total shambles and has been for the last two months," he said.

"But yesterday was the worst. I'm very tired of the blame game between the DfT, Govia Thameslink and Network Rail.

"I just want someone to take responsibility and fix the problems, whatever they are."