RAIL boss Olivier Brousse met angry commuters face-to-face in Tonbridge last night to answer concerns about ailing train services.

M. Brousse, chief executive of Connex, was joined by the company's new managing director, ex-Railtrack man Michael Holden, and senior Connex officials.

They attended the annual meeting of the Tonbridge and District Rail Travellers' Association, held at the Angel Centre, Tonbridge.

Also present was Tonbridge and Malling Tory MP Sir John Stanley who was among many in the 80-strong audience to fire complaints at the Connex team.

RTA press officer David Bower said: "It was certainly a lively meeting and M. Brousse must have felt himself to be something of a Daniel in the lions' den. The past few months have seen some of the worst train performance in recent history, with deplorable conditions being suffered by commuters."

Mr Bower said these had included:

* delayed or cancelled services;

* lack of information when problems occurred

* short train formations, leading to overcrowding

* dirty rolling stock

Sir John Stanley said failure to have any contingency plans in place for when things went wrong was one of the most vexatious issues.Recent problems in the Sevenoaks tunnel had left many passengers literally stranded.

In reply, M. Brousse accepted that Connex had fallen down in several areas but assured the audience that positive steps were being made towards improvements.

Power supply problems with new Class 375 trains had been resolved and new staff training programmes were being introduced to tackle specific areas of complaint.

Mr Bower stressed: "M. Brousse was very frank and he and his colleagues seemed genuinely concerned about rail users' dissatisfaction. West Kent has many people commuting to work in London, paying handsomely to do so and thus entitled to expect a decent, reliable train service.

"M. Brousse said that while things would not get better overnight, he aimed to achieve significant improvements before the franchise is re-tendered in 2006."

The association elected John Reynolds, a commuter for the past 30 years, to succeed Lionel Shields as its chairman after Mr Shields announced his retirement.