Caterham arrival/departure connection

[HST43257]

On a little track bash soon to Croydon area, and I want to clear Caterham. The connection is 1 minute, but the trains have to cross eachother once in each hour, so I’m hoping there’s a 20 second window or so. My life doesn’t depend on it but I would prefer to not spend half an hour in Caterham. Can anyone shed any light on how likely or not the connection is - and also which way around the arrival and departure have to be (ie arrival on platform 2, depart platform 1 or vice versa) for the trains to need to cross and therefore for the connection to be potentially possible.

Apologies if this is the wrong location, thought it related to timetables just as much as trip planning.

 

[Watershed]

It's an island platform, which goes in your favour. But it appears that a fair proportion of services leave about 15 seconds early (presumably starting the dispatch process exactly 20 or 30 seconds before departure) so I wouldn't have thought a +1 as reliably possible.

An arrival into platform 1 involves a conflict with a departure from platform 2, so that's the combination you want in order to maximise your chances. But as mentioned, I would regard them as pretty slim.

 

[OliverH68]

If you ended up not making the +1, there's a coffee shop by the entrance to pass some time

 

[Class455]

It's an island platform, which goes in your favour. But it appears that a fair proportion of services leave about 15 seconds early (presumably starting the dispatch process exactly 20 or 30 seconds before departure) so I wouldn't have thought a +1 as reliably possible.

An arrival into platform 1 involves a conflict with a departure from platform 2, so that's the combination you want in order to maximise your chances. But as mentioned, I would regard them as pretty slim.

I would agree, it’s incredibly tight and most trains generally leave bang on time. You may get lucky if you arrive on P1 and the departing train is on P2 but don’t bank on that. The departing train usually leaves immediately once the arriving train comes in and the departure route is set.

Caterham’s not a bad place to kill half an hour in either, there’s plenty of places to go. My advice would be to try and time it with a lunch break. If you’re really tight on time, there’s the 407 and 434 buses that can get you back to Purley, or Whyteleafe if you’re also hoping to clear the East Grinstead line too.

 

[HST43257]

Just an update to this.

I did make the connection, despite my inbound train being stopped outside the station for 30 seconds or so. The dispatcher (I think) on the platform probably held the train up by a few seconds which happened to help me, but I would have probably just made it without them.