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Tube strike February 2017: Underground bosses vow services will return to normal by morning rush-hour

Tube services are set to return to normal by first thing on Thursday morning – with no further disruption expected after 5.30am – Transport bosses have announced.

Londoners faced a day of travel misery on Wednesday after the capital was hit by a Central line walk-out in conjunction with a Southern Rail strike.

And disruption is set to last late into Wednesday night, with London Underground services not returning to good service until lines open on Thursday, Transport for London announced.

A TfL spokeswoman told the Standard: “The disruption on the Central line will last all day today and there’ll be no Waterloo & City line at all.

Tube chaos: Disruption is set to continue until Thursday morning (@MCR_Digital)
Tube chaos: Disruption is set to continue until Thursday morning (@MCR_Digital)

“From the start of the day tomorrow, services on the Central line will be back to normal.”

Hundreds of thousands of passengers using the Central and Waterloo & City lines struggled to get to work on Wednesday morning after RMT and Aslef unions called a strike.

The walk-out was over the “forced” transfer of eight drivers from their home depot at Leytonstone to others further afield, mainly Earl’s Court.

Parts of the Central line, used by more than 800,000 passengers a day, were closed with severe delays to the remainder of the route.

Strikes: Queues for buses at Leytonstone (Jeremy Selwyn)
Strikes: Queues for buses at Leytonstone (Jeremy Selwyn)

There was no service at the Eastern end between Leytonstone and Epping via Woodford with delays throughout central London to West Ruislip.

Waterloo & City line services – the direct one-stop link between the mainline station and Bank – were completely suspended.

Peter McNaught, Operations Director for the Central line, apologised for the “unnecessary” strikes and said: “We have made all reasonable efforts to resolve this dispute through talking through the issues with the unions, and we have minimised the number of employees affected from over 30 to eight.

“All of these moves are within the long-standing agreements we have made with the unions.”

But the unions are insisting that London Underground were pushing through the changes without prior agreement.

An RMT spokesman said: “LU has made absolutely no effort at all to allocate drivers to their home depot.

"That is the point of the argument – they are just pushing people across the network without agreement.”