The absolutely jammed A27, M27 and A31 suggests the demand is not fairly limited I would suggest.
I reckon the poster who mentioned the 1533 was guessing based on a scan of Realtime Trains.
It was the 12:03 Southampton train which was delayed, and the one which was delayed in being dispatched to the turnback siding with a Brighton to Chichester train immediately beforehand, because a driver went to have a cup of tea, despite the result of this being a train held at a red signal because platform 2 was filled by a terminating train. While i wasnt aware of the reversal being cancelled, i do think if the train had been dispatched earlier, that could have mitigated the delays to those 2 trains. I do wonder whether they would make any amendments if issues with running via Littlehampton do arise, and whether they would need to maybe cut the service back to terminate at Littlehampton, and try and have another service west of Littlehampton. What service doesnt matter, but as long as they have a westbound link, people may just about put up with it.
They'd be better off binning the Barnham shuttles and running an hourly Littlehampton to Bognor on the opposite half hour to the Brighton to Chichester
While i have thought that, the problem lies with the line east if Barnham probably being at capacity, at 8tph, with 6 from Chichester and 2 from Bognor. The Barnham shuttles are very specifically routed into platform 1 at Barnham so they dont need to connect to the mainline.
Fortunately Littlehampton has the 500 bus service now every 30 mins Mon- Sat and hourly on Sundays it leaves from opposite LA station to outside Barnham station in 15ish mins. It goes on to Chi in about 50 mins serving St Richards Hospital en route to the city centre. Fare at £2 eachway comfortably undercutting the now dysfunctional rail service. Just another example of distant Thameslink management out of touch with the south coast.
Well that is a very good point, and maybe why Southern thought that removing a westbound service would be an acceptable outcome. There is also the 700 bus which ss me tioned, already covers Bognor, which the 500 doesnt serve.
The 500 is a relatively recent (post Covid) innovation.
The shuttle provides much better connections for Bognor passengers into and out of trains to/from Portsmouth and Southampton. It also provides resilience for when the London service falls apart.
In the middle of a flood plain with no road access, the Dovey Junction of Sussex.
Under that hypothetical scenario in which such an option did get selected, they would need to improve transport links, such as adding roads towards it. In all honesty, with Kingley Gate, you would have some passengers that might use the station for purposes other than just changing there. While some tracks may need to be rearranged, it could be a useful idea inn the long term, as that it could hypothetically displace Barnham as the main junction station. Unlike Dovey Junction, it would be the kind of station which would offer more connections regionally, and new connections, such as easier connections between the Arun Valley line and the London service to Littlehampton, which currently share track on Arundel Junction, but do not connect.
Its a fair point, given that (at least during off-peak periods) that many trains are pretty empty, and filling up 2 or 3 trains could be a more economical option. However, if you cut services, all that does is make the service less attractive, and more trains allow more connections to be made at Barnham. For example, changing for a train at Barnham from a Bognor shuttle today onto the Southampton to Brighton service only took around 10 minutes (due to a small delay, leading to the fast Arun Valley service to come in first after the Bognor Shuttle (which wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been delayed). On Sunday when there are only 2 tph on the Bognor branch would take around 20 minutes, which in turn would prompt me to just get the bus to Chichester with a direct service. Ironically, often when I travel west from Bognor, due to having to change at Barnham, I often take the bus to Chichester and go from there instead of using Bognor, simply because its a better service. More cuts would put me off from using Bognor station.
Unfortunately, that doesnt take into account that there isnt practical line capacity for even 1 assitional train on the section between Barnham and Ford. Heavy retinings would be needed to fit in even 1 more train out of Littlehampton, given the line straight after the branch meets the main line is already busy, with 1 train out of Littlehampton, 3 trains from Brighton and 4 from the Arun Valley.
My apologies for mis-guessing. I would hazard a guess that the driver was reckoning on their normal 5 minutes to change ends and didn't realise/wasn't advised they needed to shunt immediately.
Indeed. Now thinking about it further, i suppose thats a reasonable point, and you could probably blame it on the signalling team around Chichester for not advising that driver, as they could have and should have done
Unless the signallings been changed at Chi it's not possible for a train to reverse in the platforms from the East. The train has to shunt in to the reception siding change ends and then come back in to the London platform. It used to be possible to reverse from the West in platform 2 the last time I was on a train that did that it was a football special from Fratton in slam door days.
It's still possible, it happens when there is engineering works between Chichester and Barnham.
Indeed, i experienced that myself a while ago. It did manage to cause some confusion when the doors opened on the right, rather than the left. It isnt a regular service however, because if it was, they probably would reinstate the midhurst bay platform next to platform 2, the one thats now heavily overgrown, which in turn would prevent platform 2 from being blocked.
The Midhurst trains actually used the up bay behind the now platform 1. The down bay was mostly used by the all stations train to Portsmouth and was electrified. Both survived until relatively recently I left from the Midhurst Bay once on a DEMU on a special to Lavant just before the Goods service was withdrawn and the line closed.
Fair enough, the bay on platform 2 was the one I meant. Fortunately, that one hasnt been sold off, so i would say that is pretty good futureproofing of it was to ever be needed again.
This is due to the Brighton-Southampton/Portsmouth services only running as far as Chichester, so to maintain a Southampton connection one of the Vic’s runs through
Shockingly, I can find no mention of the planned short terminations anywhere on the Southern website.
Techinically speaking, it was the trains from Brighton which would usually terminate at Southampton which got diverted to Bognor Regis. The service that would have otherwise served Portsmouth & Southsea go reworked into a second Brighton to Chichester service (as had been proposed during the consultation phase of the timetable change). Therefore to compensate, a London service that would have otherwise terminated at Portsmouth Harbour was diverted to Southampton.
