A 24-hour walkout which brought the London Underground to a standstill has ended, but there are still no trains running.

Only 15 of London Underground's 600 drivers reported for work on Wednesday as part of a joint strike by the RMT and Aslef unions over pay.

Despite the end of the strike at 2000 BST, services were not running on Wednesday evening and London Underground (LU) said the network will not return to normal until Thursday morning.

With buses full in central London, many travellers have been walking, driving or squeezing onto mainline trains instead.

LU described the 800 station staff who turned up for work as "heroes", but with nearly all the drivers on strike it was impossible to run any trains.

Why are they not applying in their thousands for a position with LUL?

John, UK

Huge queues built up at bus stops and roads were clogged with traffic for much of the day.

The government condemned the strike as "completely unnecessary".

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said: "It is causing inconvenience to hundreds of thousands of passengers and businesses.

"This is not the way to deal with these issues in this day and age.

"London Underground have already increased pay by 3% on top of a significant increase last year.

"If the RMT and Aslef remain unhappy they should talk to management, not go on strike."

The blame for this dispute lies fairly and squarely on LU's doorstep

RMT leader Bob Crow

A second strike by the two unions is planned for next Tuesday.

Aslef leader Mick Rix said the union had not wanted to strike, and would have been prepared to take the matter to an independent arbitrator.

But he said London Underground, which imposed a 3% rise on its workers after the unions rejected it, had refused to go to arbitration.

Driver and RMT member Gerard Vickers, 43, said his pay was about to rise to �31,274, but that the 3% pay offer was "mingy".

"[It] is not enough when you put it into the context of the conditions of service.

"We work most bank holidays, weekends and extremely unsocial hours in a dirty and hostile environment. This package has been imposed upon us."

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he backed the workers' right to strike.

He said: "If you have got a management that won't negotiate the only thing a workforce can then do is strike."

But London Underground (LU) insisted the rise was good.

LU said there was no more money, and said managers had already been to the conciliation service three times to try to settle the dispute.