London Tube strikes: Overnight station and line closures will continue until tomorrow morning

The upheaval will now last until tomorrow morning

Commuters were caught out at an overcrowded Clapham Junction station in the morning rush hour (Reuters/Stefan Wermuth)

Key London Underground stations and lines will re-close tonight and effectively give commuters seven more hours of travel chaos in the wake of the union strikes.

Transport for London workers staged a 24-hour walkout between 6pm on Sunday and 6pm today in a dispute over job cuts and office closures.

It closed almost all Zone 1 stations, the entire Victoria line and forced most lines into a reduced service.

But commuters hoping for a return to normality this evening will be severely disappointed, for the number of closures will actually increase tonight, effectively extending the chaos to 31 hours until services end shortly before 1am.

A TfL spokesman told The Independent that because staff are being taken off duty tonight, to cover their colleagues who are on strike in the day time, the workforce after 7pm will be even more depleted.

The Victoria line and Zone 1 stations will most likely remain closed until the first trains from around 5am tomorrow.

The Waterloo & City line, which was closed in the morning rush hour but was open this afternoon, will most likely re-close after 7pm.

“It’s likely the service will be decreased,” said the spokesman, who added that people working inside Zone 1 should complete their journeys home by 6pm.

“We have enough Tube drivers to run the line up and down but not enough to keep the offices open safely.

“It is likely that everything in Zone 1 will be closed after 6pm then will return to a normal service at the start of the day tomorrow.”

The spokesman said 10 of the 11 lines are currently open but that “it will not be this good once we hit 7pm”.

“We are unsure of what services will run on each line because it depends on who signs on for shifts,” she added.