Southern Rail has called for posters printed in line with a failed Twitter campaign to be "removed and destroyed".

The company launched a Twitter campaign earlier this week with the slogan 'Get Southern back on track', which called for passengers to tweet the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers' Union (RMT) with their thoughts about the strikes.

Months of industrial action by the RMT and staff sickness have meant that many services have been cancelled or disrupted, with the franchise previously having to produce a reduced timetable to deal with this.

The company wrote: "They won't listen to us, but they may listen to you."

The campaign backfired however, with many rail users criticising Southern rather than the RMT.

The Twitter campaign was due to be followed up by posters at stations to urge passengers to get involved, but Southern has now backtracked on these plans.

In an email leaked to the BBC, Southern said the campaign had caused "extremely negative sentiment".

The email instructs staff to remove posters from display and make sure they are destroyed.

Despite the removal of these posters however, Southern has not cancelled the campaign.

A spokesman for the company said: "We continue to run the campaign, as can be clearly seen by the press ads that are running all week.

"Feelings were running high after day one of the campaign and we decided, having taken on board comments from some passengers, not to display the posters at stations.

"But we make no apologies for this campaign."

The group added that this project was to get a debate going.

The RMT has struck back however, with Mick Cash, RMT general secretary, calling it a "despicable and nasty campaign designed by Southern to set their workforce up for abuse and assault".

He added: "Encouraging abuse of staff who are doing nothing other than standing up for passenger safety is a measure of this basket case outfit running Britain’s biggest rail franchise.

"It is estimated the campaign budget is around half a million pounds, money that could have been spent on keeping the guards and resolving the dispute."