HOURS before South West Trains gets rebranded in a multi-billion pound deal, officials confirmed a network-wide fault with its ticket machines.

The train firm, which has been operated by Stagecoach Group for the last 20-years, is set to be rebranded as South Western Railway at 2am tomorrow.

The £2.4bn deal will see a British and Hong Kong partnership taken over the company.

However, just a day before the relaunch, South West Trains said its machines could only accept card transactions.

It tweeted: "#InformationSWT We are sorry that the ticket machines across our network will accept card only today, please speak to the Guard for help."