Stabling is not usually an issue, and wouldn't obviously be affected by the industrial action.
It’s more of an issue nowadays than it has been in the past, which has a knock on what you can reliably do service-wise.
Gatwick sidings are more heavily used by GTR, we’re still only on 2 roads within Redhill Loco sidings following the derailment in 2019, stabling in Redhill station has gone back to being prohibited now the sidings are back in use, and SWR are using Guildford more heavily at the moment too.
But you also need to get traincrew to those stabling points for start of service - which with the taxi journey on the start of the job (we don’t have use of GTR Redhill drivers anymore); none of the rostered-hours turns can pick up. So you end up being reliant on overtime, which won’t be happening over the industrial action week(s).
There’s excessive operating costs to factor in too - DfT has tasked all NRC operators to reduce operational expenditure where practical. If you’re having to taxi each and every traincrew pairing to/from Guildford at start and end of shifts then that massively inflates the running cost of the service; to the point where it is no longer viable.
Therefore it ends up suspended outright as per next weekend.
I do yearn for the days where we used to be about trying everything we could to run trains rather than any reason to cancel them - but under the present DfT micro-managed regime the industry has had to change to suit its paymasters. And it’s the customers who end up suffering the consequences of their short-termism.
