GTR Summer Holiday Cancellations

bramling · 18 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
Exactly, there's nothing surprising about services being lightly loaded at their outer extremities, particularly with Thameslink where there are quite a few routes which are painfully slow if used from their outer extremities and alternative, faster services exist (Rainham, Sevenoaks, Horsham etc.), but the important factor is that these services are busy when they get closer to London.

I really cannot understand why GTR are going backwards in terms of service provision whilst other operators are making improvements.

The Rainham service is a bit odd at the Medway end, as being so slow clearly few people are going to use it to travel to London, whilst the Medway towns are linked by other services. I definitely think there’s some merit to the suggestion made that if Thameslink has to go to Kent, this was probably the wrong service to take over.

Wonder what is the likelihood of the Kent section going back to Southeastern, and the Midland section being ditched altogether, all on the premise of “lower than expected usage”? Time will tell I guess. SE’s fleet situation probably precludes this for the time being.

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Stephen42 · 18 Jul 2026

wls1 said:
What would the likelihood of restoring thameslink to Beckenham Junction/Kent House peak hours and Orpington all day? Could that serve as a replacement?

Seems unlikely. The Beckenham Junction peak hour services are run by Southeastern and that's useful for route retention. The Orpingtons only ever ran to Kentish Town off peak and that platform is now getting used by Rainham with a long run in making 4tph unwise for that single platform. Hardly any trainees at Orpington or Ashford either which would be expected if a significant uplift in services.

Nicholas Lewis said:
Reading through the info provided under the Freedom of Information response above surely all the train operators had been tasked to undertake the same exercise yet only GTR has instigated any reductions.

Avanti are another operator with reductions. All operators would have been asked, but the criteria is "industry net subsidy reduction" rather than purely passenger demand. The marginal cost of operating a train will normally be crew, traction energy and sometimes train maintenance. Industry net subsidy means reduced access charges to Network Rail don't count unless it actually saves maintenance cost. Those savings would need to outweigh the revenue foregone from not running the trains. It's possible reduced level of delay repay where services would otherwise be cancelled from not enough rest day working volunteers also is in the mix.

Crew costs are several times higher than those other costs on a yearly basis. At a guess the marginal calculation will often boil down to whether an operator will reduce rest day working or largely be paying staff to sit around. Different operators will be in different positions for this and can vary across depots for the same operator as well.

For the Rainham route it's improving though still occasional cancellations due to no rostered member of staff. Rest day working will be used to minimise those normally and the reduced off peak service might avoid them all together. It would pay for itself if most trips switch, losing revenue to Southeastern still nets to zero and so only a question of what proportion of trips don't get made at all. I doubt it's that the route has the lowest ridership more the reliance on rest day working.

Nicholas Lewis · 18 Jul 2026

Stephen42 said:
Seems unlikely. The Beckenham Junction peak hour services are run by Southeastern and that's useful for route retention. The Orpingtons only ever ran to Kentish Town off peak and that platform is now getting used by Rainham with a long run in making 4tph unwise for that single platform. Hardly any trainees at Orpington or Ashford either which would be expected if a significant uplift in services.

Avanti are another operator with reductions. All operators would have been asked, but the criteria is "industry net subsidy reduction" rather than purely passenger demand. The marginal cost of operating a train will normally be crew, traction energy and sometimes train maintenance. Industry net subsidy means reduced access charges to Network Rail don't count unless it actually saves maintenance cost. Those savings would need to outweigh the revenue foregone from not running the trains. It's possible reduced level of delay repay where services would otherwise be cancelled from not enough rest day working volunteers also is in the mix.

If you run with that criteria there are plenty of routes/services where reduction could be implemented but that would put us back into the bad old days of the 60's. As @bramling indicates above GTR have been on a management contract for over a decade so DfT has been hardwired into them for sometime and the GTR management are basically being directed to do DfT bidding. I'd suspect with AWC it was more of case of alerting DfT/DfTO that a rest day working crunch was coming over summer and wanting to reduce service to manageable resource levels but DfT then spins it as reduced summer loadings to avoid criticism.

London Trains · 18 Jul 2026

bramling said:
Wonder what is the likelihood of the Kent section going back to Southeastern, and the Midland section being ditched altogether, all on the premise of “lower than expected usage”? Time will tell I guess. SE’s fleet situation probably precludes this for the time being.

If the service was being ditched altogether, it wouldn't be too difficult to move various units around to give Southeastern the necessary number of units to operate the replacement service - withdrawing the service frees up 11 8-coach 700s, some of which could move to Great Northern for Cambridge stoppers, in turn freeing up the 15 remaining 387s to move to Southern, in turn freeing up some 377s to move to Southeastern which could be used to operate the replacement service.

bramling · 18 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
If the service was being ditched altogether, it wouldn't be too difficult to move various units around to give Southeastern the necessary number of units to operate the replacement service - withdrawing the service frees up 11 8-coach 700s, some of which could move to Great Northern for Cambridge stoppers, in turn freeing up the 15 remaining 387s to move to Southern, in turn freeing up some 377s to move to Southeastern which could be used to operate the replacement service.

Interesting point about the fleet, as having the displaced 700/0s on GN is certainly viable. I hope not, as having the 387s on GN is a good thing. But the numbers would be almost exactly right to push the whole 387 fleet over to Southern

OneOfThe48 · 18 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
Is it just me or do those passenger figures for the Luton to Rainham services not seem particularly low as some people are making out - obviously most off peak trains are not going to be packed, and they aren't going to be busy at the Rainham end because of the painfully slow journey times, but closer to London they are fairly busy based on those numbers.

It just sounds like hyperbole from people trying to justify the nonsensical frequency cut.

Having 100 people on a train that can take a thousand is pretty lightly used to me

Looks like they’re keeping the trains at half hourly when they’re actually needed, which is the weekday peaks

Nicholas Lewis · 18 Jul 2026

OneOfThe48 said:
Having 100 people on a train that can take a thousand is pretty lightly used to me

Looks like they’re keeping the trains at half hourly when they’re actually needed, which is the weekday peaks

Thats the problem with fixed formation trains and the old BR Southern Region solved it by adjusting formation lengths between the peaks but its a lot of extra drivers and stabling somewhere so overall it costs less to run them that way.

OneOfThe48 · 18 Jul 2026

Nicholas Lewis said:
Thats the problem with fixed formation trains and the old BR Southern Region solved it by adjusting formation lengths between the peaks but its a lot of extra drivers and stabling somewhere so overall it costs less to run them that way.

And a 100 is a pretty good result judging from that loading, most trains have less than that

Nicholas Lewis · 18 Jul 2026

OneOfThe48 said:
And a 100 is a pretty good result judging from that loading, most trains have less than that

Indeed the 9Jxx wont have that many by Horsham but thats not the point of the service. Horsham had existing railway land to build stabling and the previous stopping service from London Bridge terminated here anyhow.

NorthKent1989 · 18 Jul 2026

I wonder that if the Thameslink Medway service were to return to SE, and restored to its pre 2028 pattern would it be able to use the Electrostar 375’s?

TrenHotel said:
Hopefully there'll be a decent rail devolution settlement for London by then so Westminster will stop meddling in the capital's metro services.

Would be nice, perhaps a devolved version of Network South East - Transport for South East

Mattplans said:
At least the service has freed up units for other metro work. If there are to be changes to drum up some demand, I'm sure there would be some value in sending it via Bexleyheath (lots of new homes going up and existing demand to TL) or Sidcup. Not sure what I'd take from them to send via Greenwich instead though!

As you say curtail it to Dartford, restore the Greenwich line to 6tph SE and the Medway via Blackheath & Woolwich is restored.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Jul 2026 ==

bramling said:
The Rainham service is a bit odd at the Medway end, as being so slow clearly few people are going to use it to travel to London, whilst the Medway towns are linked by other services. I definitely think there’s some merit to the suggestion made that if Thameslink has to go to Kent, this was probably the wrong service to take over.

I feel this service came about hastily, one to appease the Greenwich section as they permanently lost their direct Charing Cross trains, even thought by the 2010s all Charing Cross trains on the line ran via Blackheath (the official North Kent line) after Charlton off peak and some peaks too.

There was also a lot of talk at the time of London Overground taking over metro services in this neck of the woods, The CHX-Gillingham service via Blackheath and Woolwich would have been the outlier as it wasn’t quite a metro service but was a outer suburban semi fast train, SE saw an opportunity to free up rolling stock elsewhere and decided to bin it off to Thameslink who fudged it up a bit, the LO takeover never came and we’ve been left with this service since

Mattplans · 18 Jul 2026

NorthKent1989 said:
I wonder that if the Thameslink Medway service were to return to SE, and restored to its pre 2028 pattern would it be able to use the Electrostar 375’s?

It would definitely make sense if it went back to the old calling pattern. And creating a more comfortable journey for Medway > Elizabeth Line. I've always felt that there's a lot of untapped potential in this flow.

bramling · 18 Jul 2026

Mattplans said:
It would definitely make sense if it went back to the old calling pattern. And creating a more comfortable journey for Medway > Elizabeth Line. I've always felt that there's a lot of untapped potential in this flow.

I can’t really see 375s running it. They are too low-density for the London end. Though having said that, with the metro fleet situation they might be all that’s on the table!

Are there sufficient Electrostars to do it? A 3-way 700/387/377 cascade could work, much as I’m not keen on the idea of GN losing the 387s!

Mattplans · 18 Jul 2026

NorthKent1989 said:
I feel this service came about hastily, one to appease the Greenwich section as they permanently lost their direct Charing Cross trains, even thought by the 2010s all Charing Cross trains on the line ran via Blackheath (the official North Kent line) after Charlton off peak and some peaks too.

To be honest, I don't really think there's that much value in the 'North Kent' (Lewisham>Charlton) flow. The operator is always going to run more via Greeenwich, and anything ran via Blackheath is blocking a train from Bexleyheath. Blackheath is very much a Bexleyheath line station now, both in terms of local journeys (by far outstripping 'North Kent' flows) and the Charlton routing from Blackheath is pretty much a diversion and circuitous compared to if running via Greenwich instead.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Jul 2026 ==

bramling said:
Are there sufficient Electrostars to do it?

Probably not. SE made a fanfare in the TT change about how new peak services from Blackfriars to Rochester etc will be formed of Electrostars now, but they were just sets swapped with Victoria<>Gillingham which has Networkers during the peaks now.

London Trains · 18 Jul 2026

OneOfThe48 said:
Having 100 people on a train that can take a thousand is pretty lightly used to me

Looks like they’re keeping the trains at half hourly when they’re actually needed, which is the weekday peaks

I'm not sure what sort of unrealistic loadings you're expecting at the quietest times of the day, the majority of lines will have similar patterns of usage. Doesn't mean you go and cut half the services, effectively rendering the service useless at these times.

yorksrob · 18 Jul 2026

bramling said:
Good. One of the most ridiculous ideas we have seen. The government should not be encouraging people to stay at home on Fridays.

Indeed. The Government should be encouraging the move to a four day week with more leisure travel on Friday.

bramling · 18 Jul 2026

yorksrob said:
Indeed. The Government should be encouraging the move to a four day week with more leisure travel on Friday.

Slight problem, the economy has been screwed since 2008.

yorksrob · 18 Jul 2026

bramling said:
Slight problem, the economy has been screwed since 2008.

Indeed. We need more of the working classes spending.

OneOfThe48 · 18 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
I'm not sure what sort of unrealistic loadings you're expecting at the quietest times of the day, the majority of lines will have similar patterns of usage. Doesn't mean you go and cut half the services, effectively rendering the service useless at these times.

For most of the popular journeys, it’s still at least three trains an hour. Hardly useless

NorthKent1989 · 19 Jul 2026

Mattplans said:
To be honest, I don't really think there's that much value in the 'North Kent' (Lewisham>Charlton) flow. The operator is always going to run more via Greeenwich, and anything ran via Blackheath is blocking a train from Bexleyheath. Blackheath is very much a Bexleyheath line station now, both in terms of local journeys (by far outstripping 'North Kent' flows) and the Charlton routing from Blackheath is pretty much a diversion and circuitous compared to if running via Greenwich instead.

There is a lot of value in the Blackheath connection from the NKL hence why SE brought it back for Sundays, Lewisham is a fast growing urban district one day to be connected to the Bakerloo line, not to mention it’s a major transport hub with far reaching connections across South & South East London, that outweighs any connections on the Greenwich line, Lewisham is also a major shopping district.

Pre Covid the CHX-Lewisham-Woolwich-Dartford service was often the busiest of the Woolwich line services, so locals will beg to differ in the claim there is little value in this service!

Mattplans · 19 Jul 2026

NorthKent1989 said:
Pre Covid the CHX-Lewisham-Woolwich-Dartford service was often the busiest of the Woolwich line services, so locals will beg to differ in the claim there is little value in this service!

....and nowadays they are probably loaded the lightest of all SE metro services. And of course there is 'value' in the service, but it's probably the least valuable service on the network

In fact if GTR were in charge of it they'd probably make it run only every 2 hours :lol:

You only need to wait at Lewisham platform 4 during the evening peak and watch a Woolwich service leave the platform still crowded, while the following Bexleyheath service will soak up the entire platform

NorthKent1989 · 19 Jul 2026

Mattplans said:
....and nowadays they are probably loaded the lightest of all SE metro services. And of course there is 'value' in the service, but it's probably the least valuable service on the network

In fact if GTR were in charge of it they'd probably make it run only every 2 hours

You only need to wait at Lewisham platform 4 during the evening peak and watch a Woolwich service leave the platform still crowded, while the following Bexleyheath service will soak up the entire platform

That’s because since 2022 the service has been downgraded…. No Sunday service That and the fact that this service no longer goes to Charing Cross, it’s basically a duplicate of other city services that run via Greenwich.

Hopefully by eventually axing Thameslink from the line, we can someday return to the 2009-May 2018 era

London Trains · 19 Jul 2026

NorthKent1989 said:
That’s because since 2022 the service has been downgraded…. No Sunday service That and the fact that this service no longer goes to Charing Cross, it’s basically a duplicate of other city services that run via Greenwich.

Hopefully by eventually axing Thameslink from the line, we can someday return to the 2009-May 2018 era

Absolutely, this service going to Cannon Street makes little sense when you consider everything via Greenwich has to go to Cannon Street or the Thameslink core - having it return to Charing Cross would be ideal, but sending it to Victoria (in addition to the Bexleyheath service, to provide 4tph Victoria to Lewisham) wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Mattplans · 19 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
having it return to Charing Cross would be ideal

Well we've still got the issue of:
- whether there's enough demand to justify this (Stations between Dartford and Woolwich Arsenal have stronger connections to the West End via the Eliz Line, the service only really serves Charlton alone. As Blackheath and Lewisham have Charing Cross services.)

Is there enough demand from charlton alone to justify:
- displacing services from Charing Cross - it's at capacity - Tunbridge Wells (ex cannon st) and Maidstone (ex Victoria) have taken the paths in/out. To send this back there, you'd need to displace these links that have become popular amongst customers.
- yet more crossings at the Lewisham Junction undermining the efforts to improve reliability by reducing services crossing here

London Trains · 19 Jul 2026

Mattplans said:
Well we've still got the issue of:
- whether there's enough demand to justify this (Stations between Dartford and Woolwich Arsenal have stronger connections to the West End via the Eliz Line, the service only really serves Charlton alone. As Blackheath and Lewisham have Charing Cross services.) Is there enough demand from charlton alone to justify:
- displacing services from Charing Cross - it's at capacity - Tunbridge Wells (ex cannon st) and Maidstone (ex Victoria) have taken the paths in/out. To send this back there, you'd need to displace these links that have become popular amongst customers.

The Elizabeth Line hasn't only provided better links to the West End though, its equally provided better connections to the City and Canary Wharf too. The combination of the Elizabeth Line and the various changes made to this service is what has killed demand - diverting it to Cannon Street, serving all stops, cutting it back to Dartford, and retiming it so the service is now overtaken by the Rainham to Luton service between Charlton and London Bridge have all negatively affected demand. My idea would be to effectively reverse many of these changes, but you do raise a good point about capacity at Charing Cross.

Slightly going back on my own point, maybe Victoria would actually be a better terminus than Charing Cross for this service, as it would provide 4tph between Victoria and Lewisham, retains the local connections between Lewisham/Blackheath and Charlton/Woolwich, frees up a path between Lewisham and Cannon Street, and as far as I'm aware there aren't any capacity issues at Victoria.

NorthKent1989 · 19 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
Absolutely, this service going to Cannon Street makes little sense when you consider everything via Greenwich has to go to Cannon Street or the Thameslink core - having it return to Charing Cross would be ideal, but sending it to Victoria (in addition to the Bexleyheath service, to provide 4tph Victoria to Lewisham) wouldn't be a bad idea either.

This. The Woolwich-Blackheath service to CST is pointless especially when you account for how many city services there are, Thameslink, The Greenwich line to CST, The Elizabeth line and the DLR.

Mattplans said:
Well we've still got the issue of:
- whether there's enough demand to justify this (Stations between Dartford and Woolwich Arsenal have stronger connections to the West End via the Eliz Line, the service only really serves Charlton alone. As Blackheath and Lewisham have Charing Cross services.)

Thameslink, CST Greenwich trains, EL and the DLR also serve the city too

And it isn’t just Charing Cross, Waterloo East is a destination in its own right, Southbank venues, plus the interchange to Waterloo station.

Mattplans said:
Tunbridge Wells (ex cannon st)

Doesn’t Tunbridge Wells has CHX trains from Hastings too? As well the TW terminators

Mattplans said:
yet more crossings at the Lewisham Junction undermining the efforts to improve reliability by reducing services crossing here

Changing trains adds journey times too

London Trains said:
Slightly going back on my own point, maybe Victoria would actually be a better terminus than Charing Cross for this service, as it would provide 4tph between Victoria and Lewisham, retains the local connections between Lewisham/Blackheath and Charlton/Woolwich, frees up a path between Lewisham and Cannon Street, and as far as I'm aware there aren't any capacity issues at Victoria.

If capacity can’t be found at Charing Cross then I have always supported the Rainham service being rerouted to Victoria, not only does it provide an additional West End station but a much useful cross South London connection, the Peckham catchment area is buzzing on weekdays and weekends now, not only do you have Rye Lane but also nearby areas such as Lordship Lane, Denmark Hill and Herne Hill too, these areas aren’t much different to Hackney or Islington, zone 2 hubs.

PGAT · 19 Jul 2026

London Trains said:
Slightly going back on my own point, maybe Victoria would actually be a better terminus than Charing Cross for this service, as it would provide 4tph between Victoria and Lewisham, retains the local connections between Lewisham/Blackheath and Charlton/Woolwich, frees up a path between Lewisham and Cannon Street, and as far as I'm aware there aren't any capacity issues at Victoria.

You would still have issues with crossing the diamond at Lewisham. I'm not 100% sure if it's worth it.

NorthKent1989 · 19 Jul 2026

PGAT said:
You would still have issues with crossing the diamond at Lewisham. I'm not 100% sure if it's worth it.

Lewisham Junction has been improved in recent years, part of the reason why it was always having problems was because it resembled Kew Gardens for a long time and was poorly maintained.

There is nothing coming to and from Lewisham’s Ladywell/Hither Green side to St.John’s/the Slows anymore as far as I’m aware its mainly Lewisham’s Blackheath side to Nunhead/the SEML fasts

It’ll be worth it so that the Woolwich line doesn’t have a duplicate CST service

ScotGG · 19 Jul 2026

Is there anywhere to terminate them before Rainham? It is too far out to be worthwhile for people there. Gravesend is probably about as far as is needed rather than Medway.

Gravesend and stations closer to London even with HS1 still makes sense as it's less than 30 mins to Abbey Wood from Gravesend then a swift change to the Elizabeth line for Canary Wharf etc. Total trip time of 45 minutes.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jul 2026 ==

OneOfThe48 said:
For most of the popular journeys, it’s still at least three trains an hour. Hardly useless

However the remaining services are not evenly spaced out which ensures that in inner London there's a 30 minute gap between trains which is not very good for busy and fast growing stations.

Outside of London it also means one train per hour in north Kent to the Elizabeth line for interchange.

Kite159 · 19 Jul 2026

.

ScotGG said:
Is there anywhere to terminate them before Rainham? It

Dartford

(And South Eastern extending 2tph from Gravesend to Rainham in place of the Thameslink service)

ScotGG · 20 Jul 2026

That would see a reduction in trains for Abbey Wood from a number of stations between Dartford and Gravesend. Given it's a designated growth area it'll need to keep existing service frequency.

GTR Summer Holiday Cancellations

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