Andrew Ball and Zoe Lichman feared missing their flight to New Zealand Tom ... - The Times (subscription)

The disruption to travel plans caused by the rail problems left many passengers short on Christmas cheer at Paddington station in London yesterday.

Many complained that the first they knew of the cancellations to services to Heathrow was when they arrived at the station to try to buy a ticket.

Claire Sade, 20, had travelled from Lincoln on her way to catch a flight to the United States. She said: "I was going to get the Heathrow Express and not worry about it, but then I got here and I'm told 'no trains, use the Tube'. It usually takes 20 minutes — now my journey is going to take over an hour, which means I might have problems with my flight.

"This happened yesterday, they must have known what was going to happen. I checked the system twice yesterday and once early this morning and there were no cancellations then. Now I've got to rush and get a flight that I'm likely not to catch. It's not how I wanted Christmas to begin."

Andrew Ball and his partner, Zoe Lichman, were flying to New Zealand for two weddings over the weekend. When they arrived at Paddington in the morning, they said they were told "casually" to get a taxi or use the Tube.

Zoe, 36, from London, said: "Nobody seems to know exactly what the problem is — when we asked they simply told us to use other transport.

"We can't afford to miss our flight because it's such a long-haul flight. The fact is that we've just walked up to the ticket desk and been told casually by one person — there's no signage, there's no extra wardens and there's no information."

Taxis did a brisk trade as passengers grouped together to split the fare of around £65 to the airport. Sid Reagan, 65, a London taxi driver, said that he had already made three journeys to the airport. "I've been a taxi driver for 40 years and you never get jobs or requests to take anyone to Heathrow because everyone gets the train," he said. "There's always an abundance of taxis here but they did clear very soon and very early on this morning when people started to see what was happening and that they couldn't get the train. Today has been very favourable."

Marian and Grace Garba, who are sisters, were caught up in the chaos as they tried to return home to Nigeria from America for Christmas. Marian said: "We've just had to carry two very heavy bags from Hammersmith on the Tube and if we knew that the train was cancelled we would've gone from there on the Underground."

Loueis Vaujour, 54, and his wife, Henies, 51, abandoned their plans to fly to Paris and decided to try again today. She said: "It's not how we wanted to start Christmas but we were going to miss our flight anyway if we had tried to get to the airport. It's annoying because nobody told us."

There was greater cheer at nearby Marylebone station, however, where Chiltern Railways staff dressed as elves and greeted passengers with mince pies.

"We did it to help our customers through the great Christmas getaway. We have got eight elves throughout the station. I've got my head of sales as Santa," Thomas Ableman, Chiltern Railways commercial director, said.