I've been monitoring performance on this route since the new timetable. Last week and this, I travelled on it myself, from Dorchester to Gatwick (booked connection at Southampton via Barnham). This route is much cheaper than the route from Southampton to Gatwick via Clapham Junction. Don't ask me why. An off peak return via the latter route costs £70.30 and via Barnham is £31.70!!! The Barnham route is 20 minutes slower but both involve only one change, although only half the SWR Waterloo services stop at CLJ. I would have thought it useful to encourage pax to avoid CLJ but we are talking two TOCs here, so I suppose there is no coordination. Perhaps it works out better that there isn't, otherwise they would have 'standardised' fares to my disbenefit!
Performance on the Barnham route is unfortunately very hit and miss, as this thread previously discussed. The Vic - Southampton trains at xx.36 down and xx.13 up interleave with the Vic -Portsmouth ones at xx.06 down and xx.11 up. Thus Havant, Chichester and Barnham get a half hourly service to Gatwick and Victoria. The down Southampton trains have typically only a 11 minute turnround at SOU (same at Portsmouth Harbour for those), so a minor delay can escalate disastrously, given the very busy line from Barnham to Havant and then the junctions from there to Cosham.
Perhaps because of this frequency as far as Havant, there is a more relaxed attitude to CAPEing or PINEing services on the Barnham route, it seems. This however can be disastrous for those further west and can strand up-travelling pax from Weymouth to Southampton stations at Southampton, costing possibly an hour or so delay. My experience the last few weeks looking at RTT is that this cancelling and stopping short, is still continuing. I don't know how delay repay works when a booked connection does not turn up, as opposed to a delay endured on the same train throughout.
Last week, we travelled up from Dorchester S on the 1013. The 1033 is the connecting train but we had got to the station early, so took it anyway. The 1013 ground to a halt of half an hour at Bournemouth, due to a tree having fallen on the line at Sway. Luckily, our class 444 had wifi, so I was able to check how the SN half of our planned connection were doing on the way down from Victoria. They were not doing well and were PINEing all services short. We would miss our flight at Gatwick unless we stayed on the Waterloo and changed at CLJ, and of course this was now very late as well. Of course, we were caught up by the 1033 ex Dorchester, and it was running about 5 minutes behind us. I then discovered that SWR do skip stop on its Weymouth services to Waterloo. The xx.13 from Dorchester stops at Woking (for Heathrow) but not at CLJ (for Gatwick) and the 1033 stops at Basingstoke, but not at Woking but does stop at CLJ! Hurried searches of RTT (bless it!) shewed that we could bail out at Winchester, await the 1033 close behind. I had no idea what that would mean for our Barnham only ticket validity, but I was prepared to cough up if need be and argue about it later, although I hoped that the SWR guard (and of course the SN OBS from CLJ to Gatwick) would be sympathetic. Staying on the SWR train via CLJ would still enable us to get to our flight.
What non-computer-equipped, non-rail enthusiast pax would have done that day, I hate to imagine, the automated announcements at Southampton had just droned out 'change here for Gatwick, etc' and there were no manual announcements whatsoever.
Anyway, we made it and as no ticket inspections were made, I didn't need to pursue the matter further. The moral is that if one is using any trains from the west of Havant, to get to either Heathrow or Gatwick, then better leave at least three hours before the flight closes, whichever route is selected! Oh, and have your tablet or phone tuned into RTT (on several tabs!).
Seriously folks, this is not an Inter City level of service and it should be. Bournemouth, Southampton are two of our UK biggest cities. Gatwick, Heathrow and London are the three most important destinations from these and what we have is just a crowded commuter line, with trains that do not provide decent facilities for pax with luggage. Short of building a new HSL, I can't think of what could be done to improve matters, except a much higher degree of operational coordination and PIS provision. If anyone has also given thought to these matters I should be interested to hear their ideas. One idea that I thought of is that the class 377s should be modified to provide decent overhead luggage racks - like the 444s already have, and should have wifi fitted and refreshment trolley also provided. I will stop here but my down journey provided more thoughts on this subject, so will pause to hear ideas. I hope this was interesting, anyway.
Here is the current departure board at Swanwick the final station before termination or first stop on the up trains and it is regularly like this. When I worked there it was a never ending saga of problems, which I decided in the end wasn't something I wanted to continue with.
