So does anyone know, and can actually say(!), what the problem is with the Southern 171 fleet?
The platforms were lengthened in the summer last year to allow peak services to run as 10 car units, additional train sets were acquired from Scotrail and converted to 4 and 2 car 171s. In July 2017 Southern announced that all the through peak hour services would be 10 car units.
I think there might have been 1 day in the first fortnight when that actually happened! Since then the 7.30am service from Uckfield is now programmed to be only 6 cars, and the other 2 services in the morning that are meant to be 10 cars usually at least one isnt.
In the evening peak no one seems to know what length the trains are meant to be, the 16.08, 17.08, 18.06 & 19.08 were all meant to be 10 cars but rarely are, and if they are either the 15:38 or 16.38 or both are cancelled instead.
At some point next year Southern are meant to be running a half hourly peak service on the Uckfield line, with the current reliability of the rolling stock there seems no hope that this will work, so what is going on? Reliability seems to run in waves, there's 3 months of poor reliability, a couple of weeks of good and then it falls apart again.
As a supplementary question anyone know why the sackbarrow and tape appeared at Crowborough today blocking the extension of the up platform? The wags think the extensionis to be removed as its underutilised
The platforms were lengthened in the summer last year to allow peak services to run as 10 car units, additional train sets were acquired from Scotrail and converted to 4 and 2 car 171s. In July 2017 Southern announced that all the through peak hour services would be 10 car units.
I think there might have been 1 day in the first fortnight when that actually happened! Since then the 7.30am service from Uckfield is now programmed to be only 6 cars, and the other 2 services in the morning that are meant to be 10 cars usually at least one isnt.
In the evening peak no one seems to know what length the trains are meant to be, the 16.08, 17.08, 18.06 & 19.08 were all meant to be 10 cars but rarely are, and if they are either the 15:38 or 16.38 or both are cancelled instead.
At some point next year Southern are meant to be running a half hourly peak service on the Uckfield line, with the current reliability of the rolling stock there seems no hope that this will work, so what is going on? Reliability seems to run in waves, there's 3 months of poor reliability, a couple of weeks of good and then it falls apart again.
As a supplementary question anyone know why the sackbarrow and tape appeared at Crowborough today blocking the extension of the up platform? The wags think the extensionis to be removed as its underutilised