RAIL passengers in south- west England face around six weeks of travel chaos as engineers battle to restore sections of track wrecked by the winter storms.
More than 260ft of sea wall at Dawlish in Devon has been destroyed by giant waves, causing a significant stretch of railway to collapse into the sea.
No trains are running between Exeter St Davids and Plymouth, and the line between Exeter St Davids and Newton Abbot is not expected to reopen before March 18.
The Night Riviera Sleeper services between Penzance and London Paddington have also been cancelled until February 28, with services between Taunton and Castle Cary also suspended until further notice.
The disruption is estimated to cost the regional economy "tens of millions of pounds" every week until it is repaired.
The military were drafted into the Somerset Levels last night as forecasters warned of further torrential downpours. Royal Marines will assist with sand bag defences in the flood-hit region, which is expecting between 30mm and 40mm of rainfall overnight into today and tomorrow morning.
David Cameron chaired another meeting of the Cobra emergency committee and later tweeted that all Government departments were "doing all they can to help those affected".
Severe weather alerts have been put in place for south-east England, the South West and Wales overnight. Scotland has escaped the downpours and is not facing any severe weather warnings. Yellow warnings for rain have also been enforced for the West Midlands, East Midlands and east of England.
The Met Office said it has been the wettest December and January combined for more than 100 years, with rain falling on 23 out of 31 days in January across the UK and spokeswoman Laura Young warned there was no reprieve in sight.
"There is this deep depression that is going to bring a further 20mm to 40mm of rain to the south west, the south east coast and South Wales," she said. "Locally you could see 10mm to 20mm falling within a two to three-hour period over Somerset and Dorset [this morning]."
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