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Gatwick Express: Should it have more stops?

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NorthKent1989

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Mcr Warrior said:
A not unreasonable point, but should "Gatwick Express" branded services then always run fast to Gatwick Airport, omitting East Croydon?
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Good point, maybe the brand should be renamed in truth as a Thameslink from London Bridge is actually faster than the GatEx is anyway.

May the GatEx could be similar to the Cambridge Express from Kings Cross, where by its KX non stop Cambridge then all stops to Kings Lynn.

The GatEx could Victoria-Clapham non stop to Gatwick then all stops to Brighton
 
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75A

75A

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Three Bridges, Balcombe, Haywards Heath , Wivelsfield, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park & Brighton, how long would that take?
 
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JonathanH

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nw1 said:
If on the other hand we're talking about the Brighton service then there should be an East Croydon stop to restore the fast Croydon-Brighton link that existed until 2018.
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I do wonder whether it was first and foremost a 'fast Croydon-Brighton link' or just about giving East Croydon a higher frequency to Victoria. I can't see any objective reason for such a service to be restored. It was historically born from a non-stop Brighton to Victoria offering, and stopping at Gatwick instead of East Croydon maintains the quickest link between Brighton and London.

NorthKent1989 said:
The GatEx could Victoria-Clapham non stop to Gatwick then all stops to Brighton
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No. Its purpose is to provide a fast link to Brighton, which seemingly has value. The coastway services then deal with the intermediate stations.

NorthKent1989 said:
May the GatEx could be similar to the Cambridge Express from Kings Cross, where by its KX non stop Cambridge then all stops to Kings Lynn.
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Cambridge is the primary destination in that case, and it makes sense to run on beyond there. Brighton is the primary destination south of Gatwick Airport, and the end of the line.
 
ThameslinkUser

ThameslinkUser

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75A said:
Three Bridges, Balcombe, Haywards Heath , Wivelsfield, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park & Brighton, how long would that take?
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Who on earth would actually benefit from this? All of these stations have more than enough capacity outside of peak time
 
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nw1

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JonathanH said:
I do wonder whether it was first and foremost a 'fast Croydon-Brighton link' or just about giving East Croydon a higher frequency to Victoria. I can't see any objective reason for such a service to be restored. It was historically born from a non-stop Brighton to Victoria offering, and stopping at Gatwick instead of East Croydon maintains the quickest link between Brighton and London.ay
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Fair enough: it had always stopped at East Croydon "in my time", so got used to it as the norm and assumed there was a lot of demand for a fast service with 1 or 2 stops only between the two.

ThameslinkUser said:
Who on earth would actually benefit from this? All of these stations have more than enough capacity outside of peak time
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Sounds like a slightly slower version of the old "14" semi-fast but agree that there would presumably be more demand for a fast, so at most Haywards Heath only between Gatwick and Brighton.
 
ThameslinkUser

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nw1 said:
so at most Haywards Heath only between Gatwick and Brighton.
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Which the GatEx already calls at on all services except the 05.14 VIC - BTN. It's nonsensical. Serving more stations doesn't mean more demand necessarily. A faster train will likely generate more journeys for the railways in this instance than all of stations being served by a slower train that is on top of all of the other ones...
 
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Recessio

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The airports really like having their "own" service. Being generous, you can see how it makes it clearer for tourists exactly which train they need to get. Being cynical, it allows the ToCs to charge higher fares on that route.

If more stops get added to GX, it removes any speed benefit and makes it harder to justify an "express" service. I guess this needs to be weighed up vs the finite amount of paths out of Victoria to serve all the other routes and stations too.
 
Starmill

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It would be highly desirable for them to stop at Clapham Junction, picking up only on the Down. But it's not enormously practical. There's not really a need to stop anywhere else beyond the current two intermediate stops.
 
AlbertBeale

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Minstral25 said:
The GatEx between Gatwick and Brighton is well used most times I catch it - which is quite regular. My normal times are afternoons and evenings.
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Interesting - I've used GX trains between London and Brighton several times this year (always evenings and weekends I think); I've never had more than a couple of others in the same carriage.

Recessio said:
The airports really like having their "own" service. Being generous, you can see how it makes it clearer for tourists exactly which train they need to get. Being cynical, it allows the ToCs to charge higher fares on that route.

If more stops get added to GX, it removes any speed benefit and makes it harder to justify an "express" service. I guess this needs to be weighed up vs the finite amount of paths out of Victoria to serve all the other routes and stations too.
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But GX trains are only a couple of minutes faster Vic-GW. And most of the time, if you're at Victoria wanting the airport, the quickest journey (ie the earliest arrival at Gatwick) will be by taking the first train out of Victoria which stops at Gatwick, irrespective of brand. It's only if you arrive at Victoria just a few minutes before a GX train leaves that it makes sense to skip another available service and wait for the GX. Are tourists really fooled? (I doubt Brits are.) And if I remember correctly, the "next fastest train to" display at Victoria doesn't include Gatwick, and all signage encourages use of GX; which is criminally deceptive it seems to me.

If the GX trains were more frequent, and well-used, I might see the point of them. But as it is, the vast majority of people arriving at Gatwick by train from London are using something other than GX. It's a farce as well as a rip-off.
 
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ThameslinkUser

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AlbertBeale said:
Interesting - I've used GX trains between London and Brighton several times this year (always evenings and weekends I think); I've never had more than a couple of others in the same carriage.
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I commute on it at odd times (shift work) and it is definitely well used throughout the day. Like the airport itself, it has peaks and troughs in traffic. Not to mention, some carriages will be naturally busier than others. In the London-direction, the rear carriages will be nearly full of Brighton punters that don't know to walk to the front, and carriages 2-5 take most of the Gatwick passengers.

AlbertBeale said:
which is criminally deceptive it seems to me.
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Pushing people with luggage onto the sole service that can actually handle luggage, taking the load off the coastway services, is not a bad idea inherently. Regardless of this, you're more likely to see a tourist looking at what Google Maps tells them to take rather than what the station departure board says.

AlbertBeale said:
But as it is, the vast majority of people arriving at Gatwick by train from London are using something other than GX. It's a farce as well as a rip-off.
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It serves more than 1 purpose: a fast Brighton service. Brighton used to have trains with a journey time of 52 mins, now it's 62. Add in Gatwick and Croydon, and you'll be pushing on 70. Add in every other stop and you've lost a market.
 
AlbertBeale

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ThameslinkUser said:
It serves more than 1 purpose: a fast Brighton service. Brighton used to have trains with a journey time of 52 mins, now it's 62. Add in Gatwick and Croydon, and you'll be pushing on 70. Add in every other stop and you've lost a market.
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Well, Victoria-Brighton trains via Gatwick are currently 58mins, not 62 (admittedly slower than the 52 mins London-Brighton in the good old days). Adding a Clapham Junction stop would still mean doing the journey within the hour.

Its value as a fast (-er than Thameslink) Brighton service would still exist if it had an extra stop and if it didn't charge a premium ... more so in the latter case of course.

The paradox, as I see it, is that if the idea really was to get airport passengers on a separate service, to save clogging up other busy trains on that route, then they wouldn't charge a ridiculous premium and price people away from using it. Because of the price differential, most Brits I know would never go near it for a London-Gatwick journey. No, the rationale is to charge a rip-off price from the tourist market - people who don't know better and fall for the con and pay through the nose.
 
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Fenchurch SP

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It would be useful to have a Gatwick Express which was standard fares with special stock which has more space for luggage (so people don't clutter up my train!).
If it is going to continue south of the airport then it should be to Southampton and Portsmouth because I would guess a higher proportion of Hampshire (via Barnham) passengers are travelling to or from Gatwick compared to Brighton.
 
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nw1

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Starmill said:
It would be highly desirable for them to stop at Clapham Junction, picking up only on the Down. But it's not enormously practical. There's not really a need to stop anywhere else beyond the current two intermediate stops.
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Would it cause a major problem though if they left a minute or two earlier out of Victoria, as someone else suggested? The previous service on the fast lines is xx24/xx54 so presumably they could go at 27/28 and 57/58. The nice round 00/30 departure time has been lost already anyway, so preserving that is no longer a consideration.

Not sure if it would work in the up direction though.

AlbertBeale said:
Well, Victoria-Brighton trains via Gatwick are currently 58mins, not 62 (admittedly slower than the 52 mins London-Brighton in the good old days). Adding a Clapham Junction stop would still mean doing the journey within the hour.

Its value as a fast (-er than Thameslink) Brighton service would still exist if it had an extra stop and if it didn't charge a premium ... more so in the latter case of course.

The paradox, as I see it, is that if the idea really was to get airport passengers on a separate service, to save clogging up other busy trains on that route, then they wouldn't charge a ridiculous premium and price people away from using it. Because of the price differential, most Brits I know would never go near it for a London-Gatwick journey. No, the rationale is to charge a rip-off price from the tourist market - people who don't know better and fall for the con and pay through the nose.
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In 1996 it looked like it was just 51 minutes (dep Victoria xx08, arr Brighton xx59, calling East Croydon only). I think it was still CIGs and BIGs then; the buffet symbol is present which would suggest so.

This is an improvement on the 60 minutes (xx00-xx00) from the non-stop days and the 61 minutes 58 minutes from 1982 (xx05-xx06, xx08-xx06, also East Croydon only).
(EDIT: apologies, I looked at an atypical hour, the 1005 departure which leaves three minutes earlier than the normal pattern).

All timings sourced from Timetable World.

How did they manage to shave off 10 7 minutes between 1982 and 1996 incidentally? And when did it happen? (I did visit the BML regularly in the mid-to-late 80s but cannot remember the exact timings of the fasts).
 
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JonathanH

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nw1 said:
How did they manage to shave off 10 minutes between 1982 and 1996 incidentally?
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The remodelling of the lines between Selhurst and Coulsdon which was completed in 1983 and resignalling will certainly have helped reduce the timing.
 
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nw1

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JonathanH said:
The remodelling of the lines between Selhurst and Coulsdon which was completed in 1983 and resignalling will certainly have helped reduce the timing.
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Ah ok, thanks. As I said my main experience on the line in BR days was occasional visits from 1985-88 but while I remember the Victoria departure times (FWIW xx02 for the fast and xx32 for the semi-fast) I can't remember the overall journey time to Brighton.
 
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ThameslinkUser

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AlbertBeale said:
Well, Victoria-Brighton trains via Gatwick are currently 58mins, not 62
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Yeah now look at the northbound. Also take a gander at RTT and see how many really do it in the 58. Having a 1F in front at Keymer Jn does wonders for that journey time.
 
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Sussex Ben

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nw1 said:
Would it cause a major problem though if they left a minute or two earlier out of Victoria, as someone else suggested? The previous service on the fast lines is xx24/xx54 so presumably they could go at 27/28 and 57/58. The nice round 00/30 departure time has been lost already anyway, so preserving that is no longer a consideration.
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You don’t really need to as the schedules have passive provision for a Clapham Jn call anyway. You could probably therefore return to the nicer xx00/xx30 departure times if that provision was then removed. The same can’t be done on the up to get an earlier arrival into Victoria due to a clash with the down Reigate service.
 
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