I travelled from Clapham Junction to East Croydon on the 0632 service from London Victoria to Caterham and Tattenham Corner this morning - 10-car train, loads of room for everyone, fast line path, thought that this having peak trains on this route was a good way of meeting demand for people to get from Victoria and Clapham Junction to East Croydon.
Next train down is the 0636 London Victoria to Bognor Regis which I saw at East Croydon. It was 4-car and absolutely packed - then I looked at the timetable and realised that it was the first Southern train from Victoria and Clapham Junction to Gatwick Airport since the 0554 London Victoria to Southampton Central. While there are three Gatwick Express departures in between these services, I can't understand how they imagine that there is no need for a service at that time for 42 minutes.
One point that dismays me is that the Gatwick portions of the morning services from Reigate to Victoria emerge from Tilgate sidings rather than providing capacity from London. It is crazy that there is rolling stock which carries its first passengers at 0749 on a network as busy as Southern's -
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W63708/2018/05/22/advanced 5T69 0739 Three Bridges Tilgate Sdgs to Gatwick Airport particularly when Redhill and Gatwick have much worse contra-flow morning timetables than they did before the changes.
Moving on, a number of the peak Reigate trains convey a Gatwick Airport portion. They are then advertised as going to Reigate and Gatwick Airport on the information displays. My colleagues who travelled on these trains noted some anxious people who did not realise that the journey time to Gatwick Airport is over an hour given the split at Redhill. Perhaps these need to be advertised as Reigate and Horley until they pass East Croydon.
It was disappointing to see that the problems of getting trains through the stretch between Windmill Bridge Junction and Purley hasn't improved yet. One of the key things they need to do is get more right time running on this critical stretch of track. Even without the problems at South Croydon this morning, passengers on the xx29 and xx59 services from Redhill to Peterborough will have a much better experience than those who travel on the services using the slow line.
The jumbling around of service patterns on this route seems to have no real explanation, unless there was some heavy drug usage involved? If anyone has a decent reason as to why this has been done other than just to p*** people off I'd love to hear it!
While some of this may be down to turnaround times, it does also have some grounds in balancing demand between the services and allowing a number of destinations to have relatively quick journey times to London Bridge, albeit at the expense of Redhill getting a fast service.
The problem with running a service all stations from Purley to Horsham while at the same time looking to run faster services over the line is that it creates a conflict for paths - spreading the stops between the services means that all of the trains have similar running times and, at least in the off-peak, Redhill has four, rather than two reasonably timed services to London Bridge. I think the other point is that if the Gatwick to Bedford train was the fast, it would not be as full as other trains at East Croydon.
Passengers on the xx29 and xx59 from Redhill in the morning peak, assuming they run, are likely to have a considerably better experience than passengers on any other of the Redhill services, even with the Merstham and Coulsdon South stops.
It was strange today to see 377/3's at Redhill as the Tonbridge branch now doesn't need 4 coach trains.
It probably never did need 4-coach trains. I suspect that 508s were never full - the problem is that Tonbridge, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells are all interesting places but really not big enough a draw for people to travel this route.
In some ways it is a shame that a London Victoria - Clapham Junction - East Croydon - Redhill - Tonbridge - Ashford - <maybe further> service wouldn't really stack up because it, rather than Brighton would avoid the problem of having to path trains over both Stoats Nest Junction and the junctions further south on the Brighton Main Line. I understand that the demand for Brighton would well outstrip demand for anywhere in Kent.
The proposal put forward by local Rail users was half hourly to Reigate with a split one to Tonbridge and one to Gatwick but this was considered too risky by GTR as it involved joining up and splitting at Redhill.
One of the 'wins' but maybe not for all passengers from any future Reigate platform 3 is the end of splitting at Redhill. I don't really see three paths for GWR and more than a half-hourly Thameslink service (unless something runs to Reigate on the other side of the hour from the GWR stopper).
They also wanted a Victoria to Brighton semi-fast to stop but that didn't happen either.
The claim by GTR is that this is a performance risk and actually, despite the issue noted above, Southern now have 6 trains an hour in the off-peak from Victoria to Gatwick Airport at 10 minute intervals - putting two of these via Redhill breaks that pattern. The off-peak diversion of Gatwick Express trains into platform 1 at Gatwick Airport gives a great connection for Redhill, faster perhaps than a through service.
However, of course, performance risks are acceptable to GTR when it suits them - eg the Windmill Bridge Junction to Purley corridor.
My concern about any south coast service being sent via Redhill is that whilst it gives journey opportunities to people to travel south, the trains arrive full and people have to stand to travel to Victoria at the same time as there is so much spare capacity on the 12-car 700s working to Thameslink destinations. Just as Redhill people don't like stopping at intermediate stations to East Croydon, so people from the Brighton line aren't exactly clamouring to share their London trains with people in Redhill.
That said, it is the cut in services from Redhill to Gatwick in the early morning peak which is leading to difficult journeys for people.
The DfT has given GTR a problem - it has so much off-peak capacity to London Bridge which it wants people to fill yet the off-peak demand is so firmly pointed at Victoria, to which Southern run shorter trains.
A colleague travelled from Reigate on Sunday on the 1006 service to London Victoria. He told me that by Purley this 4-car train was jam packed - even without the services to the GN which largely didn't run, passengers had so many other options for travel on Sunday from Redhill but the demand is for Victoria.
The Horsham to London Bridge services used to stop all stations Purley to Horsham and the new split is causing problems as many local journeys need a change half way (Eg Earlswood to Crawley), so the Peterborough to Horsham should stop all stations and the Gatwick to Bedford should be the fast service from Redhill to London Bridge.
Running Gatwick - Redhill - East Croydon - London Bridge is unfortunately bad use of the capacity of a 12-car 700 if the other service is going to call all stations.
