Engineering works around Redhill

[infobleep]

I appreciate engineering works need to be done but does anyone know why they can only run 1 train from Redhill to Gatwick Airport today?

The train from Reading gets in 2 minutes after the train leaves so people end up having to wait 58 minutes for the next train!

Clearly no joined up railway because from Monday Great Western Railway will be running services to Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow their are rail replacement buses from Reigate to Gatwick Airport but today, nothing, save a 58 minute wait.

Out of interest I looked up Clapham Junction to Gatwick Airport via Redhill and its apparently faster to travel down the quary line and double back via the train to Redill from Gatwick Airport then go via Merstham on the rail replacement bus.

If they can't run so many tarins, why no rail replacement bus? I will tweet Southern, Thameslink and Great Western Railway Tweeter accounts to ask.

 

[ExRes]

Looking at Rail Record there seems to be a rail replacement bus service between Redhill and Purley today while everything is bus all day tomorrow

 

[Minstral25]

Simples - GWR, Southern and Thameslink don't do joined up train services. So if Southern cancel services they say use Thameslink who in turn when they cancel services say use Southern. Add GWR into mix and you have a complete nightmare. Then all are cancelled and nothing put back in its place. What's worse two of those companies are the same planners.

It was an oops moment where they suddenly realised (well were told) they had provided nothing so they scrambled a single hourly Redhill to Brighton service to cover Redhill to Gatwick but forgot to time it to work with the revised GWR service.

It actually just shows that GTR planners really are totally unaware of the Redhill routes and generally only plan for them when everything else is done. In fact they seem very unaware that GTR runs services south of London other than as destinations.

 

[louis97]

What's worse two of those companies are the same planners.

Southern/GatEx and TL/GN are planned by different people, there are separate teams in GTR train planning.

 

[JonathanH]

With the Quarry Line open, it is 'natural' for the Horsham to Peterborough service to be diverted that way to maintain a through journey rather than terminate at Redhill. The Bedford to Gatwick service simply goes off the timetable if there is engineering work with no concern about the southern end of the route. Southern just run Reigate to Tonbridge hourly when engineering work closes the line north from Redhill saving all four units which would otherwise work Victoria to Reigate to provide the half-hourly service.

Today's Brighton to Redhill service is almost certainly timed for operational convenience, probably nothing else. To be fair, it doesn't offer bad connections off the Tonbridge service, but to suggest that is by design would be generous. It doesn't help that GWR have put their services on the opposite side of the hour to where they used to be.

 

[infobleep]

Thanks for the replies. They are interesting. One option is bite the bullet and pay more to travel via Clapham Junction and the quary line. However I object to paying more because they can't plan their timetables well enough.

Alternatively I might take another longer route for the fun of it, that still avoids the Redhill wait but doesn't add a priemum to travel via Clapham Junction.

I could of course pop into Redhill and have a wonder round if I felt like doing that.

I now see that from 16:05 Great Western Railway are going to be providing a shuttle service to Gatwick Airport. The 14:10 from Guildford just happens to connect with the single service to Brighton that Southern are running. I think that would otherwise have been the only service to connect, save any ids timed services in the late evening

The Redhill Rail Users group weren't happy about this and tweeted Steve White, who I assume is high up in Southern.

@SteveWhiteRail what do you think of your operations team planners that regularily leave this kind of anomoly in services?

Appreciate they are busy at moment but I don't know how many times we have to point out these "Errors" and get ignored?

They then quoted the following earlier tweet

@SouthernRailUK as you are currently solely providing link from Redhill to Gatwick today (normally 5-6tph but just 1 today) for @TLRailUK & @GWRHelp, Do you think it wise that train from Reading arrives at Redhill 2 minutes after hourly service to Gatwick leaves?

58 mins wait?

https://twitter.com/RedhillRail/status/1304689941193134080?s=19

Steve's response was:

Steve. Engineering work constrains options but there are multiple choices for customers from Reading to Gatwick with journey planners showing options via Victoria and Clapham. We work closely with our colleagues at GWR on our core timetable. Their new Redhill services start soon.

https://twitter.com/SteveWhiteRail/status/1304695430689812482?s=19

Redhill Rail then responded to say what about intermediate stations. Also a ticket from Guildford via Clapham Junction is £17.60, where as via Redhill £13.

They could have mentioned Dorking. Someone travelling from Dorking to Haywards Heath IS not allowed to travel via Clapham Junction. To Gatwick Airport this akos wouldn't be allowed but due to engineering works today on thr Epsom stretch, National Rail Enquiries says it is valid and is quoted a £4.95 fare. A cheap route to Clapham Junction, not usually avilable.

In a response to my own Tweet, someone from the Southern Twitter team did say no customers had been disrupted.

Maybe they put them in taxis. I have no idea. It seems the 14:10 Guildford to Redhill happens to connect with the single train from Redhill to Brighton and from 16:00 onwards Great Western Railway are providing an additional service between Redhill and Gatwick Airport. Most hours the train from Guildford departs at x19 and not x10.

Still will be the first Saturday Great Western Railway service from Redhill to Gatwick Airport since I think some point in March. I'm not 100% certain as for a time some early stopping services or late services were still running to Gatwick Airport, as they usually would until they decided to terminate them short at Redhill.

 

[Minstral25]

Southern/GatEx and TL/GN are planned by different people, there are separate teams in GTR train planning.

That says so much why trains through Redhill area in disruption or during engineering works are always a mess of planning with lots of bad connections - 50% Thameslink, 35% Southern & the rest GWR! Three separate planning teams that I bet don't talk to each other.

 

[infobleep]

That says so much why trains through Redhill area in disruption or during engineering works are always a mess of planning with lots of bad connections - 50% Thameslink, 35% Southern & the rest GWR! Three separate planning teams that I bet don't talk to each other.

Well to be fair Thameslink must have spoke to Southern today, as Southern ran a service to Brighton and they don't usually do that these days

Alas neither spoke to Great Western Railway it seems. Still eventually they managed to sort something out at very short notice, which was helpful.

I was on the 18:05 non-stop express service from Redhill to Gatwick Airport. Arriving at 18:13, it thsn waited on platform 1 and formed the 18:40 non-stop express back to Redhill. I was expecting it to go into a siding, as happens from time to time at Gatwick Airport but instead a couple of trains were diverted into platform 2.

I do still wonder how passengers weren't disrupted earlier. Taxis seems the obvious thing to do.

 

[MotCO]

Do temporary timetables need to be approved by any body - eg Rail Delivery Group or Office of Road and Rail? If so, wouldn't such poor connections be flagged up?

 

[JN114]

I have to be careful what I say, as I don’t know the whole picture; but yes it was a glaring “gap” in the planning of the service for today to leave 50+ minute connections at Redhill, when at least as evidenced by the later efforts there were no infrastructure constraints preventing either the Brighton service to run later or the GW services through to Gatwick.

They were ad-hoc on the day organised between GWR control and NR Sussex, using spare resources on hand at Reading. And as I understand were relatively well patronised betwixt Redhill and Gatwick - enough to justify running them vs taxis or bus if I may proffer an opinion...

 

[infobleep]

I have to be careful what I say, as I don’t know the whole picture; but yes it was a glaring “gap” in the planning of the service for today to leave 50+ minute connections at Redhill, when at least as evidenced by the later efforts there were no infrastructure constraints preventing either the Brighton service to run later or the GW services through to Gatwick.

They were ad-hoc on the day organised between GWR control and NR Sussex, using spare resources on hand at Reading. And as I understand were relatively well patronised betwixt Redhill and Gatwick - enough to justify running them vs taxis or bus if I may proffer an opinion...

Well Steve White on Twitter didn't seem to think much could be done with the Southern trains as they needed to be pathed around other services.

Perhaps he was too quick to defend Southern. I just looked up his position and he is rhe Chief Operating Officer for Govia Thameslink Railway. I appreciate one needs to look out for their staff but still.

I wonder if people will learn from this? Perhaps a debrief on ways to improve next time.

This evening I decided as my train from Haywards Heath stopped at Horley, I'd get a bus from there to Redhill and then a coach to Reigate, rather than hang around at Gatwick Airport for a direct coach. I've not had a chance to look at Horley Station before, having previously only changed trains there on the same platform.

Once I got to Redhill I asked about the bus to Reigate. The man said there was one at 21:20. I said what about the 21:06. That's probably GWR orgnsised one he replied, I don't know about those.

As far as I could tell from this exchange, his printed sheet of paper only covered Southern Rail Replacement buses. How hard could it be for their sheet to include Great Western Railway buses? It's not his fault it's missing. Another example of silo mentality though. Like I said previously, rail companies are not alone in this respect. Other companies have this problem.

Shortly the coach turned uo as it should and I boarded it.

 

[Minstral25]

Well Steve White on Twitter didn't seem to think much could be done with the Southern trains as they needed to be pathed around other services.

Perhaps he was too quick to defend Southern. I just looked up his position and he is rhe Chief Operating Officer for Govia Thameslink Railway. I appreciate one needs to look out for their staff but still.

I wonder if people will learn from this? Perhaps a debrief on ways to improve next time.

This evening I decided as my train from Haywards Heath stopped at Horley, I'd get a bus from there to Redhill and then a coach to Reigate, rather than hang around at Gatwick Airport for a direct coach. I've not had a chance to look at Horley Station before, having previously only changed trains there on the same platform.

Once I got to Redhill I asked about the bus to Reigate. The man said there was one at 21:20. I said what about the 21:06. That's probably GWR orgnsised one he replied, I don't know about those.

As far as I could tell from this exchange, his printed sheet of paper only covered Southern Rail Replacement buses. How hard could it be for their sheet to include Great Western Railway buses? It's not his fault it's missing. Another example of silo mentality though. Like I said previously, rail companies are not alone in this respect. Other companies have this problem.

Shortly the coach turned uo as it should and I boarded it.

Southern/Thameslink generally seem to work on operational convenience rather than passenger needs. It is mostly about getting the highlighted express (GatEx/Brighton/Coast Services) as fast as possible to their destination and forget all the stations in the middle.

Glad it gave you an opportunity to investigate a few different stations though

When Redhill stations is closed to trains, GWR do NOT provide a service to Redhill - another hole. They collect their passengers at Reigate and take them to Gatwick, leaving passengers for Redhill to fend for themselves on hourly buses from Southern. Fortunately this weekend (probably by fluke) the waits were very short (5 -15 minutes) but often they will be in the opposite half hour leaving long waits.

 

[infobleep]

Southern/Thameslink generally seem to work on operational convenience rather than passenger needs. It is mostly about getting the highlighted express (GatEx/Brighton/Coast Services) as fast as possible to their destination and forget all the stations in the middle.

Glad it gave you an opportunity to investigate a few different stations though

When Redhill stations is closed to trains, GWR do NOT provide a service to Redhill - another hole. They collect their passengers at Reigate and take them to Gatwick, leaving passengers for Redhill to fend for themselves on hourly buses from Southern. Fortunately this weekend (probably by fluke) the waits were very short (5 -15 minutes) but often they will be in the opposite half hour leaving long waits.

Well I was on a GWR arranged coach from Redhill.

There can be half hour gaps or more at Redhill when less Thameslink trains are running and GWR are not running to Gatwick Airport for some reason though.

 

[JonathanH]

When Redhill stations is closed to trains, GWR do NOT provide a service to Redhill - another hole. They collect their passengers at Reigate and take them to Gatwick, leaving passengers for Redhill to fend for themselves on hourly buses from Southern.

There is very good reason for GWR to run Reigate to Gatwick and not go via Redhill given station access and the road network. They have tended to run Reigate to Redhill buses as well although didn't yesterday. Redhill to Gatwick isn't their responsibility.

Southern / GTR still can't get rail replacement right through Redhill - the timetables are often illogical (although i admit I haven't been paying attention recently to what they have actually run).

 

[infobleep]

There is very good reason for GWR to run Reigate to Gatwick and not go via Redhill given station access and the road network. They have tended to run Reigate to Redhill buses as well although didn't yesterday. Redhill to Gatwick isn't their responsibility.

Southern / GTR still can't get rail replacement right through Redhill - the timetables are often illogical (although i admit I haven't been paying attention recently to what they have actually run).

I was on a coach from Redhill to Reigate that already had people on board. It just must surely have come from Gatwick Airport as they didn't get off. It wasn't a Southern rail replacement bus either.

So as far as I'm concerned that was a bus from Gatwick Airport to Reigate via Redhill.

 

[Minstral25]

I was on a coach from Redhill to Reigate that already had people on board. It just must surely have come from Gatwick Airport as they didn't get off. It wasn't a Southern rail replacement bus either.

So as far as I'm concerned that was a bus from Gatwick Airport to Reigate via Redhill.

I suspect you was on a Purley to Reigate bus supplied by Southern. Technically they run hourly to replace the Victoria to Reigate service.
Thameslink provided a replacement Purley to Horley bus service along the A23 and GWR a Reigate to Gatwick direct via the A217.

I'm not sure why you felt it wasn't a Southern/Thameslink replacement bus.

This has been the new pattern for about a six months as previously GWR ran two buses (Reigate to Gatwick direct and a shuttle to Redhill from Reigate). This left London bound Reigate passengers with a long wait at Redhill despite normally having a direct service, then another long wait at Purley for a Victoria service. It didn't follow the pattern of the post May 2018 timetable.

 

[infobleep]

I suspect you was on a Purley to Reigate bus supplied by Southern. Technically they run hourly to replace the Victoria to Reigate service.
Thameslink provided a replacement Purley to Horley bus service along the A23 and GWR a Reigate to Gatwick direct via the A217.

I'm not sure why you felt it wasn't a Southern/Thameslink replacement bus.

This has been the new pattern for about a six months as previously GWR ran two buses (Reigate to Gatwick direct and a shuttle to Redhill from Reigate). This left London bound Reigate passengers with a long wait at Redhill despite normally having a direct service, then another long wait at Purley for a Victoria service. It didn't follow the pattern of the post May 2018 timetable.

I felt it wasn't a Southern / Thameslink one because when I asked the man at the bus stop about the next bus, he said there was one at 21:20. When I said what about a 21:06, he replied that must be a GWR one. He don't know anything about that. So I took him for his word and assumed it was run by GWR

 

[Minstral25]

I felt it wasn't a Southern / Thameslink one because when I asked the man at the bus stop about the next bus, he said there was one at 21:20. When I said what about a 21:06, he replied that must be a GWR one. He don't know anything about that. So I took him for his word and assumed it was run by GWR

Apologies - I understand GWR were running buses from Gatwick via Redhill this weekend.