“That’s not, ‘travel if you absolutely have to’, it’s not ‘check before you travel’, it’s ‘do not travel’.”
Mr Panes said the branch lines – for example, the line to Henley – were running, but difficulties outside of the Thames Valley were making onward travel more difficult.
“If you’re trying to get to somewhere on [branch] lines that makes sense, but if you’re trying to use those lines to, for example, get into London or further west say than Swindon, we’re just not going to be able to get you there at the moment,” he said.
He said the flooded areas were seeing “more water on an hour-by-hour basis”.
“We can run trains until that floodwater gets above the height of a rail, because at that point you’ve got the risk of the ballast that holds the track in place washing away,” he said.
“Colleagues at Network Rail are doing their best [to] make it safe for trains to run again, but it is problematic now.”