Train companies faced the anger of passengers and politicians yesterday after further snowfalls led to cancellations and long delays on busy commuter routes.

The snow also resulted in the closure of runways at a number of airports, with Gatwick remaining shut until mid-afternoon.

Although nearly all major roads were open, conditions on side roads remained difficult, with the AA reporting another day of above-average number of call outs.

On the railways, commuter routes into London were among the worst affected, with some trains axed and delays of up to two hours on some lines.

Some unfortunate passengers travelling with the Southern train company through Sussex and Surrey who had taken six hours to do a 60-minute journey last week, yesterday found themselves once more stuck behind a broken-down train.

This time their journey took around three hours.

While admitting there had been some serious delays, the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) said staff had done "an extraordinary job" to keep the railways running during the wintry weather.

Atoc also dismissed the suggestion of the RMT union that there had been "rail chaos" today.

However, train customer watchdog Passenger Focus called on the rail industry to make sure it was doing enough to keep trains moving and said lessons had to be learnt from the experiences over the last few days.

And the London Assembly Transport Committee yesterday wrote to the bosses of the Southeastern train company raising concerns about disruption and reduced services as a result of the recent snow.

At one stage today, the runways at Gatwick, Southampton, Birmingham, Cardiff and London City airports were all closed. Gatwick was not able to open until 3.15p.m. with more than 100 flights having to be cancelled.

Even when the West Sussex airport was able to start operations again, it was only in a position to get away about six flights an hour and was not accepting any arriving aircraft.

On the roads, snow meant the A66 remained closed in both directions between the A685 near Brough in Cumbria and the A67 at Bowes in County Durham.

A section of the A628 in Derbyshire's Peak District was also shut, while snow also caused the closure, for a time, of the M48 Severn Bridge.

A number of roads in the Scottish Highlands were closed, while in Oxfordshire farmers joined in the snow-clearing operation on the roads.