Thameslink Services/Timetable from May 20th 2018

[Kanrakuq]

For the Peterborough-Horsham route, as just a basic passenger looking on, let me know if I've got this right based on what I've seen: Network Rail said TL can't keep abandoning Horsham trains halfway through the route at Kings Cross, so instead TL have scheduled actual timetabled services into Kings Cross instead (Hitchin, Biggleswade, etc. seemed to have four an hour this morning), they're completely removed the timetabled P-H trains that are unable to go through the core, rather than marking them as cancelled, and so the only ones timetabled for it are essentially guaranteed to do so (and, as far as I can see, they did).

If that is the case, why on earth didn't they do it last week and give some fluff about "phasing in" the timetable gradually or something? Well, I mean, they said that anyway, but you only needed to have eyes to see it was just chaos — this at least makes it look like someone has thought about it. So they had all that bad publicity and anger last week for nothing.

P.S. Despite the timetable changes, spare a thought for poor Arlesey and Sandy, which seemed to have been the only stations that didn't get any Kings Cross trains this morning. The other stations got served by a variety of different ones, but with those two, they saw a 90 minute gap of southbound trains during the rush hour with their only available pastime being watching the other emergency Kings Cross trains drive past without stopping.

Albeit, it was a timetabled 90 minute gap this time, rather than a surprise, so that's an improvement ... no, since the timetable was only released at about 2am last night, actually it's not ... They seem to remember that Arlesey is a normal station during the 10 minutes when they're telling us how much the season ticket will cost. Now all they need to do is work on the other 364 days, 23 hours and 50 minutes.

 

[Failed Unit]

Yes, thats why its done.

Amazing - they are allowed to get away with it as well.

I have booked at AP ticket for which I need to get the 0856 WGC - Stevenage service on Friday. If they remove it from the journey planner - i am entitled to no compensation in terms of delay repay or support to go north as the train didn’t exist, where if it is cancelled I would be. I wonder how many are getting stung by this. I will be watching real-time closely on Friday.

But basically you can book in advance and have your journey invalidated with less than 24 hour notice. Lost for words about the contempt GTR are showing to passengers.

 

[AM9]

Amazing - they are allowed to get away with it as well.

I have booked at AP ticket for which I need to get the 0856 WGC - Stevenage service on Friday. If they remove it from the journey planner - i am entitled to no compensation in terms of delay repay or support to go north as the train didn’t exist, where if it is cancelled I would be. I wonder how many are getting stung by this. I will be watching real-time closely on Friday.

But basically you can book in advance and have your journey invalidated with less than 24 hour notice. Lost for words about the contempt GTR are showing to passengers.

I doubt that they would refuse DR compensation as you made a contract with them against an itinerary. If you keep your side of the deal and they haven't/can't fulfil theirs, as long as it isn't natural non-railway causes, e.g. exceptional weather, war etc., then they are responsible for honouring the contract. The difference between a cancellation and a removal is railway semantics. To a small claims court it is still a breach of contract and wouldn't allow such a mealy-mouthed and irrelevant argument to be put forward. No TOC would even let such a claim to get to court anyway. Just put a claim in and see.

 

[Failed Unit]

I doubt that they would refuse DR compensation as you made a contract with them against an itinerary. If you keep your side of the deal and they haven't/can't fulfil theirs, as long as it isn't natural non-railway causes, e.g. exceptional weather, war etc., then they are responsible for honouring the contract. The difference between a cancellation and a removal is railway semantics. To a small claims court it is still a breach of contract and wouldn't allow such a mealy-mouthed and irrelevant argument to be put forward. No TOC would even let such a claim to get to court anyway. Just put a claim in and see.

Hopefully I won’t need to and it will run. But good to know I won’t be left on the platform with a “the train on your itinerary doesn’t exist” argument

 

[jamesthegill]

Hopefully I won’t need to and it will run. But good to know I won’t be left on the platform with a “the train on your itinerary doesn’t exist” argument

I've got a sneaking suspicion that this week (and last, and probably until this is sorted) will give blanket approval of delay repay claims for these dates, akin to the Redhill buspocalypse of a few weeks ago.

 

[SA_900]

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 5 characters.

 

[mugam4]

akin to the Redhill buspocalypse of a few weeks ago.

In reality there was no blanket approval for Redhillgate

 

[talldave]

As predicted by many of us, we now have a de facto Emergency Timetable, but smuggled in without explanation as though nobody will notice.

There needs to be a ‘cards on table’ public statement explaining why this has happened and when, if ever, the full timetabled service will resume. Alongside a fulsome apology. The only reason not to have the inevitable reckoning today is career preservation.

At the risk of being a pedant, you can't resume something you've never done. I'd like to know when the timetabled service will start!

That said, whilst I'm a venomous critic of GTR for their utter incompetence in not managing to start new services, I am not a critic of the whole 24tph concept. There seem to be many posters using the current debacle to justify their "I said it would never work" argument. But we haven't tried running the timetable yet because GTR don't have the competence/trains/drivers/planners/biscuits/enthusiasm [delete as appropriate] to do it.

So shouldn't we hold off with all the doom and gloom until we've actually tried it?

 

[physics34]

The more I think about it the more it's actually unbelievable - a flagship new service in planning for well over a decade which they have attempted to deliver without having the people available and trained to drive the trains. Still, the arrogant "it will work" attitude has well and truly been found out. It's been obvious from day one this would be a shambles, but they've managed to well and truly blow the expectations of shambles out of the water.

No wonder the attitude from some on here in the past has been rather defensive to the point of being over the top.

Blind faith... this crazy idea that things will just come together magically.

If they wouldve just been honest, yes there wouldve been a backlash, but i doubt as much as there has been

 

[Bedpan]

You can claim delay repay for any timetabled service even if it has been removed from the planner (unless there are scheduled engineering works I believe).

Unless there are scheduled engineering works? So should we be suspicious about the engineering works in the core which they gave as the reason for the amended timetable over the weekend just gone, which nobody knew about previously?

 

[physics34]

Spot on. When I first heard about the routes Thameslink was taking I thought that’s what would happen. Far easier to take trained drivers and give them some extra traction and route knowledge than train up loads of new drivers who then have to learn a plethora of routes too. It would have made sense for Southern drivers to learn to a suitable overlapping point - Kentish Town and Finsbury Park say - and Great Northern Drivers to learn down to London Bridge or even East Croydon.

Also wouldn’t the new London Bridge to Epsom route have been a better place to send the ex Tattenham Thameslink, rather than Rainham?

Yeh the Epsom service wouldve worked. The 'interference' into Kent Link services doesnt make a huge amount of sense.

There are drivers based at horsham and three bridges who are still with south who sign Horsham(some sign Brighton) to LBG.. drivers at Norwood that sign East Grinstead to LBG that are now just doing metro stuff cos these routes have gone over to TL. Kind of baffling and i guess its a similar story north of the river

 

[USBT]

Also wouldn’t the new London Bridge to Epsom route have been a better place to send the ex Tattenham Thameslink, rather than Rainham?

With the slight correction that the Luton service was to have gone to Caterham** that makes total sense. No conflicting paths with SE, the service would have used the Bermondsey Flyover and avoided Windmill Bridge Junction. And if route learning/driver training was planned properly much easier to get that service up and running. One wonders if GTR put 2 and 2 together on this one; I suspect it was separate decisions months or even a year apart.

[** - Tattenham Corner was to have got the Cambridge via WGC that was given to Maidstone East and then deferred to Dec 2019].

 

[NorthKent1989]

Spot on. When I first heard about the routes Thameslink was taking I thought that’s what would happen. Far easier to take trained drivers and give them some extra traction and route knowledge than train up loads of new drivers who then have to learn a plethora of routes too. It would have made sense for Southern drivers to learn to a suitable overlapping point - Kentish Town and Finsbury Park say - and Great Northern Drivers to learn down to London Bridge or even East Croydon.

Also wouldn’t the new London Bridge to Epsom route have been a better place to send the ex Tattenham Thameslink, rather than Rainham?

Yes you would think so, the Rainham bit makes no sense whatsoever, not just in terms of the fact that it displaced a popular and well used semi fast service from Gillingham to Charing X via Woolwich and Lewisham, in terms that there will be a conflict move made at NKE Junction whih if a delay occurred in that area it wouldn’t just knock on effect onto to the Thameslink network but more importantly on to the mainline Cannon Street services, some apologists however would like you to believe that there will be no problems and that everything will be fine with NKE.

Heck why not go all the way to Guildford like old school Thameslink did back in the early 90s! Thameslink promised it wouldn’t intersect too much into SE Territory it it’s done just that in the most bizarre and illogical way possible, then again the words illogical and Thameslink do go hand in hand.

 

[Bayum]

Well, so far I’m unimpressed with Thameslink. Whether due to the timetable change or what, I’ve just had two 700s take me to places that haven’t married up with the platform display screens, or the train screens. Now I’m at Denmark Hill trying to get back to London Bridge. Mentioned it to one of the workers upstairs and they didn’t seem to care. Seems like complacency over the timetable shift is high.

 

[gingerheid]

First 7 trains from Cambridge to core cancelled today.

It's remarkable to think that really only very recently they were supposed to be running 4 an hour! In other industries that kind of gap between what you said you were going to do and what you did would get you into trouble!

I'm still completely baffled as to how they can't have a more realistic understanding of what they ate going to be able to do the next day.

 

[bramling]

At the risk of being a pedant, you can't resume something you've never done. I'd like to know when the timetabled service will start!

That said, whilst I'm a venomous critic of GTR for their utter incompetence in not managing to start new services, I am not a critic of the whole 24tph concept. There seem to be many posters using the current debacle to justify their "I said it would never work" argument. But we haven't tried running the timetable yet because GTR don't have the competence/trains/drivers/planners/biscuits/enthusiasm [delete as appropriate] to do it.

So shouldn't we hold off with all the doom and gloom until we've actually tried it?

Not really, no. Last week has already given a flavour of what we can expect -- late running from other areas, recovery measures leading to a highly unpredictable service particularly at locations who are unfortunate enough only to get 2tph, and lengthy waits on crowded core platforms. On top of this we have uncomfortable trains with their uncomfortable seats.

As has been posted many times, if we want some through trains then fine let's have them, but please don't timetable them so that they make up 100% of the service from a station.

 

[bramling]

Blind faith... this crazy idea that things will just come together magically.

If they wouldve just been honest, yes there wouldve been a backlash, but i doubt as much as there has been

I seem to remember one particular poster described the GN side as "simple". It's that kind of attitude which has put us where we are now IMO.

No doubt some of these people just look at the route map and see a straight line with a branch, which on paper could be seen to look "simple". Unfortunately reality is a little more complicated!

 

[Bikeman78]

As for GTR out. Yes it won’t fix things overnight but at the moment they seem to go from cock-up to cock-up. Yes DfT has blood on its hands. But I think at the very minimum Horton should go for the contempt he has shown his customers on the media. At the moment GTR seem to be able to do what they like.

Charles Horton has been promising jam tomorrow for as long as I can remember. At least 15 years that's for sure.

 

[Kanrakuq]

In the end even if things eventually run "smoothly" I think as an idea it's a corpse, and anything that looks like movements are just from electricity being jolted through it. The timetable used to be nuanced and dynamic and built around the needs of the people in the towns and villages outside of London who needed to get in quickly in the morning and out quickly in the evening, and most stations had their own nice little fast service at some point. Now, the focus of everything, timetable and operations, seems to just be around ensuring the core runs smoothly, with the people in the stations north and south, who are the whole reason the train line exists, demoted. It shouldn't be a surprise that this change of focus is annoying people who have found that suddenly their journey isn't considered very important and hardly any return trains are stopping at their station in the evening because the trains are, shock, 10 minutes late, "the core must be obeyed," and so it's skip stop time. This mindset is never going to gain support from people paying thousands of pounds for season tickets.

 

[thruud]

I use DMK daily and this new timetable has been an utter shambles. The station has suffered from severe overcrowding due to entrance problems and inadequate space for the sheer volume of passengers at peak time. Now its even worse.

Before the changes we got something like an 0804, 0813, 0819, 0826 and 0832 (and others beyond that). This now seems to have changed to an 0807 (short train 4 carriages), an 0817 (that seems to have been cancelled or at least vanished), an 0823 and an 0837.

They've also squeezed in the 0820 victoria service to platform 3, where the BFR trains run from, making it much more crowded than before, and its now practically impossible to board a train in rush hour due to the severe overcrowding on the carriages.

As a normal commuter I've given up - I've now started taking the bus to work, even though its far less convenient as at least I can get on a bus. I cannot begin to describe what an atrocious experience it is to try using DMK during rush hour now.

 

[jon0844]

The trains not running being deleted is to stop them filling up the boards and confusing people as to what is and isn't running. I am sure they don't save GTR any money at all.

Yesterday there were platform screens showing cancelled services and it was hard to see what the next actual train would be. Some were showing as delayed, but were already known not to exist.

Sadly this has resulted in some services reinstated NOT appearing on the boards and running without people being aware, and people not being on the platform to use the train when it departed.

Disruption mode will likely remain for some time and is the best option, but not flawless.

 

[NorthKent1989]

Looks like I’ll be using Victoria again tonight which is out of my way but who cares, Thameslink certainly don’t, there are delays and some cancellations on the Rainham route, I’ve noticed the Plumstead lot, the ones who said it’s unreasonable for Medway to have faster trains than Plumstead and were moaning about their terrible 6tph pre 20/5 have kept very quiet about this mess since it began!

I sincerely hope Crossrail shows Thameslink up and shows them how to run a railway, in fact I hope They put an end to the current Thameslink and redraw it’s routes again and listen o the conerns of commuters properly!

 

[southernyoshi]

About Crossrail, I wonder if Thameslink would be better taken over by TfL & truncated to within-zones & inner he counties only? Restoring the outer services to the termini - if the core's gonna be a tube line, have it run by people who know how to run a tube

 

[Agent_Squash]

About Crossrail, I wonder if Thameslink would be better taken over by TfL & truncated to within-zones & inner he counties only? Restoring the outer services to the termini - if the core's gonna be a tube line, have it run by people who know how to run a tube

Was considered by the DfT, and rejected. The idea was deeply unpopular.

You’ll also find that the Operational Readiness team has some ex-LU staff, including line controllers.

 

[Bishopstone]

Despite all of the pre-cancellations, the live departure board for City Thameslink - which I use as a ready reckoner for service levels - evidences multiple further cancellations and late running of 20 minutes plus.

 

[jonm]

14:35, 14:51, 14:58, 15:05, 15:21 from LBG to Bedford/Luton all cancelled.

 

[bromleyboy21]

A couple of questions which would take away a lot of the uncertainty:

1) Does anyone know how many drivers short GTR currently are before the full planned timetable becomes fully operational?
2) How many drivers are being trained up per day/week?

With this information a possible end date to the disruption could then be advertised to at least try and appease the travelling public. Presumably every day more trains should be able to start running their full planned route/diagram as more drives are trained?

 

[Taunton]

Does removing trains from the journey planner help GTRs PPM? If you take today. The GN outers are at 37% on time. But if you include the ones removed from the journey planners it would be much lower. Do GTR gain another advantage in respect it makes their PPM look better?

Same on Sundays. The inners were in the 90%+ region. But then 50% of them were cancelled and removed from the journey planner.

Yes, it's a complete fiddle and fraud, and Thameslink will be trumpeting "improved" figures that aren't. Any professional journalists reading here pleaae take note. Of course, Grayling is too stupid to understand otherwise (I see Modern Railways' key writer this month has indirectly pointed out that Thatcher would never have tolerated anyone so gormless in her cabinet - he regularly reminds me of Jim Hacker in 'Yes Minister'). And Horton knows this.

Are there any printed timetable sheets or printed pocket timetables at the stations that show the "proper" service from May? Have they been revised? Or were they never done?

 

[NorthKent1989]

Just looked on Thameslink’s website, they aren’t running trains between Rainham and Rochester at the moment due to flooding yet I just checked on South Eastern trains and they seem to be running a normal service, sounds like Thameslink are just making up excuses now

 

[AM9]

About Crossrail, I wonder if Thameslink would be better taken over by TfL & truncated to within-zones & inner he counties only? Restoring the outer services to the termini - if the core's gonna be a tube line, have it run by people who know how to run a tube

Quite apart from the fact that passengers have gained from the flexibility of alighting/boarding their trains from/to central London at the four stations in the core over the past 30 years despite occasional disruption, there's

a) the fact that St Pancras regional (platforms 1-4), London Bridge (platforms 4&5), Blackfriars (platforms 3&4) & Kings Cross (various shared platforms) all together would be hopelessly inadequate for turning around the outer suburban traffic that Thameslink handles through the core
b) if that traffic was dumped at the existing terminii, there would be far worse consequences on the Northern Line, and after Crossrail opens, the Circle/Met/H&C lines would probably be near to collapse at times​

The DfT assessed that knowing the expected traffic on all the current lines and the expected volume to be delivered by Crossrail, specifically at Farringdon and Moorgate/Liverpool St. They also knew that wholesale expansion of of all the existing terminal facilities was never going to happen. It certainly wouldn't have been some sort of kneejerk fix suggested in the midst of staffing issues.