Commuters were turned away from London Bridge until 7pm Photo: Hayley Bannister

There was chaos across London after a fire broke out at London Bridge train station.

The fire, which began in the equipment room of the station at around 5pm Tuesday night forced many commuters to endure long delays and overcrowding in stations.

Widespread signalling failtures resulted in no trains running from London Bridge, Cannon Street, Waterloo East or Charing Cross until after 7pm.

Victoria Tube station had a huge influx of commuters and had to be closed leaving commuters with no choice but to find alternative routes home.

Fiona Taylor, a route-managing director from Network Rail for Kent said; “Fire caused a complete loss of signalling in the London Bridge area on Tuesday evening, causing severe disruption to train services.

“It was a very difficult evening for everyone and I would like to apologise to passengers who were caught up in the delays and thank them for their patience. We were able to restore signalling by 7pm but services continued to be disrupted as we worked with train operators to get their trains back in the right place.”

Network Rail said staff dealt with the small fire and stated that nobody was hurt but that investigations are ongoing into the cause of the blaze.

Although signalling was fixed by 7pm, Network Rail bosses said that the major delays would continue.

They tweeted: “”#LondonBridge Signalling has been restored. Major delays are ongoing throughout the area.”

Angry commuters took to Twitter to vent their frustration after disruption to their journeys.

Chris Huff, an athlete from South London said: “Tubes and buses were turning people away! I was at London till gone 9 then got a taxi home!”

Mark Martin wrote: “6 hours 15 mins to get home from #londonbridge last night. Can anybody beat that?”

Another wrote: “London Bridge closes and London goes mental.”

A TfL spokeswoman said: “There was a signalling problem at London Bridge with Network Rail which obviously impacted Victoria as well…Victoria did become very busy so at times we had to close the tube station at Victoria to help with overcrowding.”