Southern Victoria to Portsmouth and Southampton chronic bad performance

B&W said:

Enough Housebuilding now in around the Littlehampton, Bognor, Billingshurst and SW of Horsham to have a service via Dorking and Sutton.

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They cannot path such trains from Sutton towards London. It was all explained in the last Sussex RUS.

InOban said:

See post #5

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Sorry do t know why I missed it before

Dr Hoo said:

To be pedantic, a train that is terminated short is usually referred to as a "PINE" in telegraphic code-speak.

A train starting intermediately is sometimes called a "CALVIN" although I am not sure that this was an old telegraphic code.

"CAPE" is intended to mean 'cancelled throughout".

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I've heard and used 'CAPE'd but how many of the other telegraph codes are used in today's railway. The codes 'PINE' and 'CALVIN', i have never used or heard them being used....

B&W said:

Enough Housebuilding now in around the Littlehampton, Bognor, Billingshurst and SW of Horsham to have a service via Dorking and Sutton. When I started to use the route Horsham had to cope with 3tph each way on the MidSussex ( fast semifast and slow) , the Brighton and Guildford trains and terminators via Three Bridges plus in those days Goods trains. The Dorking route had the Vic fasts, Horsham Waterloos, Holmwoood terminators , terminators at Dorking etc. So the Dorking route was quite intensive all with mechanical signalling. Not sure it has as many trains now which also are slower than they were in 1938, progress we have had not. Even in the 80s it was 65mins on the 1720 to Pulborough, still slow for a c50mile run,but today? It was possible to do it in 50mins via Dorking and Sutton if the line was clear all be it 90mph on Holmwood and Warnham banks.

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It depends on how you measure progress. It’s quite difficult to squeeze much more out of Southern infrastructure. The gains from electrification and multi aspect signalling were absorbed decades ago. Third rail limits speed gains anyway, as does the sheer density of services on much of the network. The station closures that allowed long distance services to be sped up elsewhere didn’t really occur in the more densely populated and commuter oriented South. There are greater numbers of longer trains making more stops carrying more passengers. There has also been a greater emphasis from the state on making the railway pay which means concentrating more traffic on the main line destinations where there is more demand. Dorking to Horsham passes through a largely rural area and the towns at both ends are well served already (think how East Grinstead or Uckfield to Lewes suffered closure under similar conditions), and the signalling reflects its traffic. All of this combines to prevent more trains being routed that way.

I think my point about these shortenings and cancellations is that one ends up taking a half hour to an hour longer and if that could be avoided by running a less intensive service, then that might be preferable, especially for Gatwick and Victoria bound pax, who as Sarahj pointed out, are the majority of customers. The railway is competing with the car, especially to Gatwick, and does so very well in saving customers the car parking fees at Gatwick, for instance. This advantage is lost if you miss your plane!

Yesterday, three services during the day were lost to pax from Weymouth to Southampton with those above destinations. It is clearly a chronic issue. Today there is further disruption, not helped by an unfortunate 'hit by train' incident between Southampton and Fareham. (In this case the force majeure delay was limited because the person was injured and taken to hospital - I think it was an LC incident at Netley - hoping for the best for her).

More generally this terminating at Fareham business happens way too often.

Someone else suggested the turnaround times are too short - with such a long journey, should you be really trying to turn something round in 10 minutes?

Might also illustrate the counter-arguments of trying to run an overly-frequent off-peak service (which has been the philosophy in recent years, so much so that on many lines there is no difference between off-peak and peak frequency) - if there were more spare paths then presumably there wouldn't be such an issue with the return journey running late?

Perhaps, with more Southern, GN and SouthEastern services becoming Thameslinks next year (and thus using 700s, presumably releasing a good number of 377s and other Electrostar variants) they could make an incoming Victoria arrival at Southampton form the next Brighton and vice-versa. That way they'd have safer turnaround times of half-an-hour or so; they could use the sidings west of Southampton if platform space was unavailable.

^^^ Yes I wondered about that too. The reason for the pine and consequent calvin of the services seems to be that once the down train is more than 7 minutes late at Havant, they give up on the idea that it could turn around at SOU in time. In fact today, they let it go, 20 mins late into SOU, but that was in a morning of sheer chaos, also due to the dreadful 'one under' incident. The return from SOU at 1113 (1C45) left very late of course at 1127 (but with only a 5 minute turnround!) but went all the way through. Pity the poor pax from Bognor on 1C43 who had to admire Horsham for 27 minutes to be able to proceed with the Southampton joined on the back.

If you interwork the two at Southampton the ex Brighton would have about 50 minutes to turn round as the next Victoria, the two services normally cross alongside Northam depot. They might consider that to be uneconomic over the course of an entire day, but it's quite comparable with SWR's use of 3 units on Portsmouth & SS (PMS) to Southampton, which almost permanently occupies platform 3 at PMS.

Dec 2018 might be the best time to reconsider platforming and layover times between services, as the present Poole will no longer sit there for 20 mins, it really ought to go to a siding or loop, the present Portsmouth to Southampton will run through, but the new SWR semifast will add an extra terminating arrival. There's also the XC terminates every other hour. Not easy to visualise it all...

otomous said:

It depends on how you measure progress. It’s quite difficult to squeeze much more out of Southern infrastructure. The gains from electrification and multi aspect signalling were absorbed decades ago.

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Resignalling, including but not limited to work to change over to colour light usage and track circuit block principles, actually resulted in a reduction in capacity in some areas. This is not due to the limitations of the newer technology - far from it - but due to the rationalisation which happened at the same time. There are ground frames where there used to be full-time signal boxes, greater spacings for signal sections, fewer crossovers for contingency use, fewer "cripple sidings" for failed trains, single-line sections, etc.

Third rail limits speed gains anyway, as does the sheer density of services on much of the network.

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Third rail tends to limit capacity as well as speed gains. There's little point increasing some permissible speeds due to stopping patterns and the need for all trains to stop somewhere, usually multiple times, on each mainline. This is also one reason why a high-speed replacement of one of the mainlines in the "South Central" area wouldn't really work - there are simply too many places en-route where stops need to be made and capacity needs to be increased.

Sadly, the Southern network in particular has long suffered from terrible arbitrary chopping and changing resulting in an almost total lack of comprehensive clock-face timetables in the peak hours, combined with little service recovery time before the train service is expected to level-out to a clock-face off-peak timetable. This means service recovery is extremely difficult, especially at the shoulder peaks, where the trains may not be the busiest, yet the service still falls apart for thousands of passengers every day. This in turn means bad publicity from passengers who have road-based alternatives (at such times of day), and in turn, the railway fails to attract additional custom from people feeling able to travel for leisure or business outside of the routine high-peak demand.

The station closures that allowed long distance services to be sped up elsewhere didn’t really occur in the more densely populated and commuter oriented South.

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Such station closures would have failed due to the sheer volume of demand or due to political pressure. The area is not blessed with a huge number lightly-used stations which can just be closed... and where stations are lightly used, they tend to not impact performance or else have specific spikes in traffic which makes it unpalatable to close them. For example, a train might make up two minutes not calling at Hever, but the revenue from summertime tourist traffic will more than make up for the marginal impact that a station closure (of a facility with minimal upkeep costs) would have.

Dorking to Horsham passes through a largely rural area and the towns at both ends are well served already (think how East Grinstead or Uckfield to Lewes suffered closure under similar conditions), and the signalling reflects its traffic. All of this combines to prevent more trains being routed that way.

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The signalling on the Dorking to Horsham route is restrictive, but secondary in impact to the third rail equipment and quality of the permanent way. You can signal 2 stopping services and 1 non-stop service per hour in each direction, and this generally works reasonably well on occasions when it is done, including the odd bit of the peak hours and occasionally to move stock after engineering works. However, that much strain on the track itself would probably need extensive renewals far sooner. The route is an important link between towns in the Chichester area and South London, not to mention Horsham and South London as well. As I've previously posted, I reckon the route could be developed in a cross-London link for Sussex to the WCML if merged with the semi-fast Southern WLL services, but in the mean time, more could be done to improve local connections with a more frequent service, better advertising of the local area, and better infrastructure quality. You only have to look at how relatively well-used the peak time services on this route are; I was shocked when I first went on some of the northbound morning peak services, as they can be very busy indeed by Dorking and Leatherhead. And even despite the small populations of the villages en route, there must also be hundreds of regulars just been Dorking and Horsham via Holmwood, Ockley and Warnham, when combined throughout the day. The larger towns in the area are certainly employment centres on their own.

nickw1 said:

More generally this terminating at Fareham business happens way too often.

Someone else suggested the turnaround times are too short - with such a long journey, should you be really trying to turn something round in 10 minutes?

Might also illustrate the counter-arguments of trying to run an overly-frequent off-peak service (which has been the philosophy in recent years, so much so that on many lines there is no difference between off-peak and peak frequency) - if there were more spare paths then presumably there wouldn't be such an issue with the return journey running late?

Perhaps, with more Southern, GN and SouthEastern services becoming Thameslinks next year (and thus using 700s, presumably releasing a good number of 377s and other Electrostar variants) they could make an incoming Victoria arrival at Southampton form the next Brighton and vice-versa. That way they'd have safer turnaround times of half-an-hour or so; they could use the sidings west of Southampton if platform space was unavailable.

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Platform space is indeed an issue; stations like Brighton and Victoria struggle with anything longer than 10-15 minutes at times, let alone half an hour. A 10 minute turnaround is not ideal, sure, but is very much the imposed requirement on the Southern area. There are also trains which have turn around in that time (or less) on routes in the Redhill area, routes via Oxted, etc. London turnarounds may be better from late 2018, but I can't see the South Coast and Sussex area being much better. If anything, late turnarounds from the Core could make things harder.

One poster spoke of timetable changes next May which he thought might improve matters. Does anyone know of a link to what is proposed? SR PPM must be horrific to behold this month, I suspect.

HowardGWR said:

One poster spoke of timetable changes next May which he thought might improve matters. Does anyone know of a link to what is proposed? SR PPM must be horrific to behold this month, I suspect.

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The proposed May 2018 timetables can be found at https://www.transformingrail.com/download-timetables. There are some significant changes to Southern services (as well as introducing the first tranche of the Thameslink timetable).

There is a thread in the Allocations, Diagrams & Timetables section regarding the ongoing consultation.

I could only find a thread on Thameslink GTR 2018 but I suppose that was it. There wasn't much in it about SN mainline services. Thanks for mentioning the link. The weekday 2018 timetable is labelled December 2018 for some reason instead of May 2018. I could not detect much change to VIC-SOU except they were leaving at 36 past the hour from VICtoria instead of 32. I'm just wondering whether it's too late to have my moan to them about so little time for the change-rounds at SOUthampton. You would think that they already were aware of it. Several 'Pines' and consequent 'Calvins', again, the last two days.

I know that they think it's still LBSCR against LSWR (joke, but possibly psychologically so?) but what if they ran the service through to Bournemouth and made the connections there?

HowardGWR said:

I could only find a thread on Thameslink GTR 2018 but I suppose that was it. There wasn't much in it about SN mainline services. Thanks for mentioning the link. The weekday 2018 timetable is labelled December 2018 for some reason instead of May 2018. I could not detect much change to VIC-SOU except they were leaving at 36 past the hour from VICtoria instead of 32. I'm just wondering whether it's too late to have my moan to them about so little time for the change-rounds at SOUthampton. You would think that they already were aware of it. Several 'Pines' and consequent 'Calvins', again, the last two days.

I know that they think it's still LBSCR against LSWR (joke, but possibly psychologically so?) but what if they ran the service through to Bournemouth and made the connections there?

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Hasn’t it been said before that capacity through the new forest is limited, from Dec 18 there will be at least 4 trains an hour plus any freight on 2 aspect long sections.

Running either service through to Bournemouth would take half an hour each way, so in principle would just move the same problem of short turnarounds to Bournemouth. So you'd need an additional unit per day for each extended route, and still more utilisation to allow for lengthened turnarounds.

As pompeyfan suggests, overall line capacity is limited and is the reason the Bournemouth service was cut back to Southampton in the first place, around 10-12 years ago.

^^^ Weymouth then? Dorchester?

I'm trying to get a half hour to 45 minute turnaround. This is what SWR achieves at Exeter and it seems to work very well (even with all the uncertainties of near-London congestion and the single track west of Salisbury). Why not yet more splitting and joining west of Southampton, which would be more convenient for customers than changing from one train to another? Can SN units operate with SWR ones? If not, why not?

If it's economic for SWR to have such a layover for a unit turning around, then why not SN?

You see, I'm building up to a late response to GTR (20th Dec is deadline)......

Edit I had no idea they went to Bournemouth 12 years ago, thanks.

Southern run 377s, SWR run 444s or 450s. They could in theory couple together mechanically. But trying to get them to talk with eachother would involve a huge amount of effort and time.

I've changed the title to create a more general discussion and include Portsmouth.

For those who don't know how this service operates, it is supposed to work as follows:
Up direction: (Times may vary by a minute of two each hour)
Trains from Weymouth (WEY) to Waterloo arrive at Southampton (SOU) at xx58 and xx28.
At xx13 the connecting train leaves for Victoria. A second service to Brighton departs at xx32 (note the 4 minute booked connection from Weymouth, including a sprint over the bridge!) and allows a connection with a train starting from Portsmouth to Victoria, at Havant or Barnham.
So two trains per hour from Southampton to Victoria but the second much slower due to a change.

From Portsmouth (PMH) the first service train leaves for Victoria at xx15 and allows that change, at Havant for SOU pax at xx28 (18 minute wait at Havant for them). A second train leaves PMH (to Waterloo) at xx45 and allows a change at Havant at xx04 onto that xx13 from SOU to VIC at xx10 (only 6 mins for them, same platform).

Both SOU and PMH services combine at Horsham with a service from Bognor. Bognor pax are thus often messed about as well.

Thus there are two half hourly services to Gatwick and Victoria from those two cities, one involving a change in each case, so frequency is very good. There are no inter-city services on this route: a service at high speed, comfort, and few stops does not exist, as would be the case on other lines.

Down services: a mirror of the up ones. Trains are split at Horsham (one set to Bognor, the other to PMH or SOU).

The problem is that timekeeping between East Croydon and Horsham on the down services is chronically poor. As an earlier post pointed out, due to the interleaving with coastal services, a ten minute delay at Barnham can be more than 20 minutes by Havant. The SOU down train will often be 'pine' at Havant or Fareham. This leaves pax from Weymouth to Southampton stranded, because their connecting train is 'calvin' and it will delay them by half an hour to an hour, apart from the inconvenience and anxiety involved. There are also many service failures: I've seen 'difficulties with crew', mechanical breakdowns, and 'planning difficulties' listed, only in the last week.

I don't know how this appalling situation can be resolved and invite suggestions as to what could be sensibly done. Reliability issues (staff or machinery) are aside from timetable ones, so it's really the latter in which I am interested. I am also interested in the standard of train too.

It's been a disaster ever since they recast the Coastway West/Vic to Southampton timetable a few years back. Maybe time to run 2 x Brighton to Southampton and have a connection at Barnham with the Vic going to Portsmouth instead ?

I think HowardGWR is possibly reading too much into the connections across Southampton. The connection into the eastbound Brighton is probably more by luck than design, and I'd be surprised if the original timings of the Victoria didn't just fall that way. It's more likely that they are timed with regard to something going on at Barnham, Horsham or on the BML. For many years the Victoria was the only SN service, and the additional Brighton was added relatively recently in about the only place on the clockface it would fit in amongst the other Netley line services.

^^^ Well, the booking engines shew the 4 minute one at SOU (xx28 arr from WEY to dep Brighton xx32) as a booked connection!!

tony6499 said:

It's been a disaster ever since they recast the Coastway West/Vic to Southampton timetable a few years back. Maybe time to run 2 x Brighton to Southampton and have a connection at Barnham with the Vic going to Portsmouth instead ?

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Yes, having watched performance over the last week, that seems a very good idea. I have already worked out that if you get the train to Brighton at xx32, ignore the booking advice (change at Havant onto the ex- Pompey) and stay on it until Barnham, because you might at least end up on one to VIC from Bognor or go on to Littlehampton and restart from there (and so on and so on!).

This morning, pax from Weymouth eastwards to Wool would not even have made it to Southampton as an early up train broke down at Moreton and all subsequent down trains are being turned at Fareham!

Just to back up my point, have a look at this one at the link to the RTT 0832 ex Victoria. It has actually made it to Southampton, one minute after it should have returned to Victoria. It was probably touch and go whether it was not 'pined' at Havant or Fareham.
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/G72111/2017/12/20/advanced

This is typical, unfortunately.

HowardGWR said:

^^^ Well, the booking engines shew the 4 minute one at SOU (xx28 arr from WEY to dep Brighton xx32) as a booked connection!!!

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Booking engines will obviously show it as a connection, but they will show any valid connections. But it doesn't mean the overall timetable was designed from the ground up to allow for them, and it also doesn't mean they are guaranteed to be maintained in future timetables.

As it turns out, the connections in the Dec 2018 SWR timetable appear to extend by 2 mins - assuming the corresponding SN service times don't also change as well. But I strongly suspect that has been done independently to speed up the SWML overall timings, not with a view to connections.

swt_passenger said:

Booking engines will obviously show it as a connection, but they will show any valid connections. But it doesn't mean the overall timetable was designed from the ground up to allow for them, and it also doesn't mean they are guaranteed to be maintained in future timetables.

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I hope you will agree that this is not much use to an elderly lady with a suitcase who has to struggle off the 1128 arrival from Weymouth, over the bridge to platform 2A, by 1132, as the booking engine told her to do.
Not that this morning she would have had a chance, due to the SWR debacle at Moreton, the trains from Weymouth never having arrived!

Update: Never mind Weymouth; had you motored to Wareham and parked there (I looked at that) you would have got no further than Bournemouth (stuck outside) as all lines are blocked there (points failure it says)! Calamity.

tsr said:

fewer crossovers for contingency use,

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Yes, I get the impression particularly since the Grayrigg accident a few years back that there’s been a dileberate policy of removing what are considered little used crossovers. but I may be wrong

1c12 1106 off Victoria to the Harbour didn’t even make it past Barnham today, there were signalling issues somewhere near Havant but it was only 10 late at Barnham. The 1312 is probably the service that suffers the most from being Pined on the PMH-VIC route. The 1329 to Brighton from PMH is also one that gets cancelled often.

I have seen some southern turned at Portsmouth and Southsea P1. Probably not ideal that though.

tony6499 said:

It's been a disaster ever since they recast the Coastway West/Vic to Southampton timetable a few years back. Maybe time to run 2 x Brighton to Southampton and have a connection at Barnham with the Vic going to Portsmouth instead ?

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The Gatwick to Southampton market is too big I think, going via Clapham is fast but the Clapham to Gatwick section is chronically busy (but as an aside, could be vastly improved by de-premiumising the Gatwick Express and stopping it at Clapham - other trains like one or more of the East Grinstead, Reigate or Tonbridge could then skip Clapham if capacity is an issue with stopping all Southern fasts there).

So I'd keep the direct Southampton to Gatwick link. As I said, longer layover times at Southampton, with the Victorias and Brightons swapping over, would help significantly - Southern might get a bit twitchy about long layover times but if it's the only way to run a reliable service, I think it needs to be strongly considered. The Gatwick market in particular needs a reliable service not prone to cancellation, and if the service needs to use more units (displaced 377s off services going to Thameslink), why not?

nickw1 said:

The Gatwick to Southampton market is too big I think, going via Clapham is fast but the Clapham to Gatwick section is chronically busy (but as an aside, could be vastly improved by de-premiumising the Gatwick Express and stopping it at Clapham - other trains like one or more of the East Grinstead, Reigate or Tonbridge could then skip Clapham if capacity is an issue with stopping all Southern fasts there).

So I'd keep the direct Southampton to Gatwick link. As I said, longer layover times at Southampton, with the Victorias and Brightons swapping over, would help significantly - Southern might get a bit twitchy about long layover times but if it's the only way to run a reliable service, I think it needs to be strongly considered. The Gatwick market in particular needs a reliable service not prone to cancellation, and if the service needs to use more units (displaced 377s off services going to Thameslink), why not?

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I don't think the people from East Grinstead, Redhill and Reigate would be to happy if they had a service call at Clapham Junction removed from one or all trains. That is what would be need to stop Gatwick Express trains.

After all there are already trains from Victoira to Gatwick that stop at Gatwick and at Clapham Junction.

infobleep said:

I don't think the people from East Grinstead, Redhill and Reigate would be to happy if they had a service call at Clapham Junction removed from one or all trains. That is what would be need to stop Gatwick Express trains.

After all there are already trains from Victoria to Gatwick that stop at Gatwick and at Clapham Junction.

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Ever tried to get on one? What galls is the sight of a half empty GX passing through, when you are waiting for your pleb's train at Clapham Jcn with the throng.

I have written to the timetable people on the link kindly provided by an earlier poster and I cited this discussion in my response, providing a link to it. I suspect though, that the issues are well-known, which then amazes me that GTR don't put forward a timetable for 2018 that will actually work.

Today's up performance, from Portsmouth and Southampton has been something of a typical basket case with several trains stopped short and cancelled. It is very often the down trains that perform badly and the problems just grow, from Gatwick onwards, with consequences for up services. I assume that Mr Grayling, other MP, or a journalist, never has had to depend on these services themselves, otherwise we would know about it!

Is there any room at Gatwick (east of Platform 7 say) to put some south-facing bays in? It sounds like the service exists for Hampshire - Gatwick passengers so terminating it there would serve them while avoiding it getting holed up in the northern BML. And it would be a usable connection for London too - with so many Gatwick - London trains. North-facing bays could help capacity too by taking care of terminating GatEx & the GWR.

I regularly travel from Portsmouth & Southsea to Gatwick and to Brighton. I understand that the incoming train may get terminated early at Havant or Fratton, so I check the National Rail Journey Planner to see what's happening. I just want accurate information so I know whether to go for an earlier South Western train and change, or to simply walk to Fratton.
On the 30th Nov, I was wanting to catch the 09:33 PMS to BTN. Between 9am and 9:20am, when I left my house to walk to the station, this train was shown as 1) on time, 2) cancelled, and then 3) re-instated but with a short delay. By the time I got to PMS, the train was cancelled, having been turned around at Fratton!