Commuters left waiting for nearly two hours at a remote stop on the Cotswold Line found the official passenger information phone on the platform put them through to a wrong number.

Yesterday's Thames Trains 8.04am service to Oxford from Combe Halt - which is about a mile from the nearest village - had been cancelled due to a driver failing to show up.

The frustrated passengers pressed the "information" button on the telephone in order to get in touch with Thames Trains but found themselves talking to the receptionist of a telephone technology firm in Reading instead.

Thames Trains promised that a taxi had been sent to collect passengers waiting for the 8.04am, but said it had "got lost." It promised to send another taxi, but one hour later it had not arrived.

Regular commuter Peter Glare said: "We alternately got through to Global Channel, and Thames Trains. Usually, when we did get through to Thames Trains by pressing the official information button on the telephone, we were told we were in a queue and our call would be answered shortly. Then we were cut off.

"But we were told that one taxi had got lost and another was on its way. At nearly ten o'clock we walked away".

Thames Trains spokesman Jonathan Rudley said: "We didn't give our customers a very good service today. We put our hands up and apologise. Global Crossing is the company that installed our information system. Our IT department is looking into why the wires crossed."