Arun valley block (14-22 August)

[Bald Rick]

However, NR has a habit of selling these blockades to deliver loads of work and then you will find that mtce with still have there cyclic possessions every quarter rather than getting a route fettled up so it can't run without any disruptive possessions for a few years at least.

It doesn’t matter how much fettling you do, there will always be 13 week defects. And the cyclics are also very handy for deveg, seasonal prep, structures exams and the like.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It doesn’t matter how much fettling you do, there will always be 13 week defects. And the cyclics are also very handy for deveg, seasonal prep, structures exams and the like.

The thing is the major S&C works at Horsham require some prep and follow up disruptive possessions in addition to the blockade. This creates significant disruptive access across the whole route so they should incorporate all mid life refurbishment of S&C, rerailing, major deveg, work on structures, drainage, tamp it to death so that the route can be maintained using at worst some extended Sunday AM possessions rather than that 28hr for next two years. That won't happen because thats not the railway way but it needs to be if it is to appeal to the leisure travel.

28hr Crawley-Arundel 11th July

52hr Crawley-Pulborough extend Arundel on Sunday 17th/18th July

52hr Crawley-Pulborough extend Arundel on Sunday 31st july/1st aug

9 day blockade Crawley/Dorking/Arundel

52hr Crawley-Pulborough extend Arundel on Sunday 4th/5th September

28hr Crawley-Billingshurst 3rd October

 

[The Planner]

Part of the issue is that the maintainer won't be funded to go in and blitz, they will be funded for the cyclical stuff.

 

[Bikeman78]

On a recent visit I had a look at the work that has been done. The down platform at Littlehaven has been extended but is not in use yet; waiting for alterations to the singalling.

Most of the points north of Horsham station have been replaced. There is a new facing cross over just north of the junction on the Three Bridges line. This will enable trains from Three Bridges to run straight into platform 1 or 2. I have no idea what is planned to use it. In the current timetable, the only likely candidates are late evening arrivals from Peterborough heading for the sidings.

The money would have been better spent removing the conflict for trains arriving from Dorking into platform 1. It would require about 200m of track to be upgraded in the goods yard (about one third looks to have been done anyway) and a new crossing to connect it with the up Dorking line. That would give trains to and from Dorking conflict free access to platform 1. Currently the Bognor/Portsmouth portions arrive into platform 2 at XX:41/XX:46 with the down Dorking threading it's way into platform 1 at XX:44. I don't think it's permitted to run trains into platform 1 and 2 in opposite directions at the same time.

 

[Sunset route]

On a recent visit I had a look at the work that has been done. The down platform at Littlehaven has been extended but is not in use yet; waiting for alterations to the singalling.

Most of the points north of Horsham station have been replaced. There is a new facing cross over just north of the junction on the Three Bridges line. This will enable trains from Three Bridges to run straight into platform 1 or 2. I have no idea what is planned to use it. In the current timetable, the only likely candidates are late evening arrivals from Peterborough heading for the sidings.

The money would have been better spent removing the conflict for trains arriving from Dorking into platform 1. It would require about 200m of track to be upgraded in the goods yard (about one third looks to have been done anyway) and a new crossing to connect it with the up Dorking line. That would give trains to and from Dorking conflict free access to platform 1. Currently the Bognor/Portsmouth portions arrive into platform 2 at XX:41/XX:46 with the down Dorking threading it's way into platform 1 at XX:44. I don't think it's permitted to run trains into platform 1 and 2 in opposite directions at the same time.

The new facing crossover gets commissioned next summer when Parsonage Road AHBs get converted to MCB CCTV crossing and as of yet I’m not sure which services will booked to use it.

You can only arrive in platform1 from Dorking at the same time as a train arriving in Platform 2 form Billingshurst if it is the second attaching train as that does not require the signal overlap through Horsham Junction.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The new facing crossover gets commissioned next summer when Parsonage Road AHBs get converted to MCB CCTV crossing and as of yet I’m not sure which services will booked to use it.

You can only arrive in platform1 from Dorking at the same time as a train arriving in Platform 2 form Billingshurst if it is the second attaching train as that does not require the signal overlap through Horsham Junction.

So that will be another major closure then - the whole point of blockades is blitz to the job and go away for years.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

On a recent visit I had a look at the work that has been done. The down platform at Littlehaven has been extended but is not in use yet; waiting for alterations to the singalling.

Most of the points north of Horsham station have been replaced. There is a new facing cross over just north of the junction on the Three Bridges line. This will enable trains from Three Bridges to run straight into platform 1 or 2. I have no idea what is planned to use it. In the current timetable, the only likely candidates are late evening arrivals from Peterborough heading for the sidings.

The money would have been better spent removing the conflict for trains arriving from Dorking into platform 1. It would require about 200m of track to be upgraded in the goods yard (about one third looks to have been done anyway) and a new crossing to connect it with the up Dorking line. That would give trains to and from Dorking conflict free access to platform 1. Currently the Bognor/Portsmouth portions arrive into platform 2 at XX:41/XX:46 with the down Dorking threading it's way into platform 1 at XX:44. I don't think it's permitted to run trains into platform 1 and 2 in opposite directions at the same time.

The crossover to Platforms 1 and 2 at Horsham from Three Bridges will be very useful, particularly in the STP world when timetabling services.

 

[Bald Rick]

So that will be another major closure then - the whole point of blockades is blitz to the job and go away for years.

A weekend at most.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

A weekend at most.

New layout means new control tables and a data rewrite and potentially a fair bit of principles testing although as im not familiar with what is being changed so maybe not too many routes to test. Still should have been incorporated into a blockade but no doubt someone decided that was too risky so wait six months then come back and disrupt the service again and of course because its testing nothing else will be allowed.

 

[Bikeman78]

The new facing crossover gets commissioned next summer when Parsonage Road AHBs get converted to MCB CCTV crossing and as of yet I’m not sure which services will booked to use it.

You can only arrive in platform1 from Dorking at the same time as a train arriving in Platform 2 form Billingshurst if it is the second attaching train as that does not require the signal overlap through Horsham Junction.

Thanks for the clarification. It's unfortunate that the arrivals from Dorking and Bognor are around the same time. In my experience the trains from Dorking slow to a crawl waiting for the signal to clear. Ironically the arrival into platform 3 twenty odd years ago used to be much faster.

 

[Bald Rick]

New layout means new control tables and a data rewrite and potentially a fair bit of principles testing although as im not familiar with what is being changed so maybe not too many routes to test. Still should have been incorporated into a blockade but no doubt someone decided that was too risky so wait six months then come back and disrupt the service again and of course because its testing nothing else will be allowed.

It’s not that big a job. It was a separate job, running to a later schedule (originally) and couldn’t be brought into the blockade. Just bringing forward the platform extension work into the block was quite a challenge. Had the blockade been delayed to accommodate the LX commissioning it would have to have gone back at least a year, and then the risk of TSRs at Horsham (and elsewhere where track and Civils work was done) would have been greater. Also it would have extended the blockade over the 9 days into another working week. Better to have 9 + 2, with 6 of the days weekends, than 11 with 4 of them weekends.

Definitely the right decision.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It’s not that big a job. It was a separate job, running to a later schedule (originally) and couldn’t be brought into the blockade. Just bringing forward the platform extension work into the block was quite a challenge. Had the blockade been delayed to accommodate the LX commissioning it would have to have gone back at least a year, and then the risk of TSRs at Horsham (and elsewhere where track and Civils work was done) would have been greater. Also it would have extended the blockade over the 9 days into another working week. Better to have 9 + 2, with 6 of the days weekends, than 11 with 4 of them weekends.

Definitely the right decision.

Thanks for some more background and a would have thought a TSR, unless it was 5mph, at Horsham wouldn't have had a material impact on the service given everything stops there.

Anyhow looking at the public version of EAS 2022 v4 these are the disruptives through Horsham although I acknowledge half of the year has already been superseded by CPPP so maybe different but disruptives tend to hold

wk43 - 27hr track mtce
wk51 - 27hr wheel timbers
wk11 - 52hr l/xing renewal pt1
wk12 - 52hr l/xing renewal pt2
wk21 - 52hr track renewal
wk22 - 52hr track renewal
wkk3 - 27hr track mtce

So the only reduction is the M-F blockade possession over this year. I get L/Xing renewals are a 1 in 30 year job and at least they've incorporated the new connection presumably as part of the data change for Littlehaven but we really do need to get to a place where blockades deliver levels of work that enable a reduction in disruptives for at least the following five years.

 

[Bald Rick]

So the only reduction is the M-F blockade possession over this year. I get L/Xing renewals are a 1 in 30 year job and at least they've incorporated the new connection presumably as part of the data change for Littlehaven but we really do need to get to a place where blockades deliver levels of work that enable a reduction in disruptives for at least the following five years.

But then the blockade would have been much longer. The one this year didn’t just do Horsham, it did 4 other big renewal jobs (saving 52h possessions for each of them, at least) embankment work up the Dorking line, replacing signals and track circuits up to Crawley, a whole host of station improvements, plus a load of maintenance.

The deal was to change from 30 separate weekends of work to deliver all that, to 1 x 9 day block and a handful of other weekend blocks. So there has been a significant reduction in disruptive weekend working.

 

[Javelin_55]

Most of the points north of Horsham station have been replaced. There is a new facing cross over just north of the junction on the Three Bridges line. This will enable trains from Three Bridges to run straight into platform 1 or 2. I have no idea what is planned to use it. In the current timetable, the only likely candidates are late evening arrivals from Peterborough heading for the sidings.

Horsham has suffered recently from a few issues that highlighted the need for this new crossover. Two separate incidents that took Platform 4 out of use (one of them for several hours during the Monday morning peak) meant congestion and services were having to perform shunt moves at the south of the station and via sidings, complicated by the fact that some drivers didn't sign this move. Having this new crossover would have made the signaller's job a bit easier.

 

[Bikeman78]

Horsham has suffered recently from a few issues that highlighted the need for this new crossover. Two separate incidents that took Platform 4 out of use (one of them for several hours during the Monday morning peak) meant congestion and services were having to perform shunt moves at the south of the station and via sidings, complicated by the fact that some drivers didn't sign this move. Having this new crossover would have made the signaller's job a bit easier.

Presumably Peterborough drivers don't sign the shunt at the south end? I'd expect all Southern drivers that go to Horsham would do. Is it possible to shunt via the north end? That used to happen but I'm going back decades.

What were the incidents that took out platform 4? I remember in the late 1990s a pair of class 319s refused to split and blocked platform 4 for hours. Meanwhile the stoppers via Gatwick went into platform 3 and then shunted across to platform 1 or 2.

 

[Javelin_55]

Presumably Peterborough drivers don't sign the shunt at the south end? I'd expect all Southern drivers that go to Horsham would do. Is it possible to shunt via the north end? That used to happen but I'm going back decades.

What were the incidents that took out platform 4? I remember in the late 1990s a pair of class 319s refused to split and blocked platform 4 for hours. Meanwhile the stoppers via Gatwick went into platform 3 and then shunted across to platform 1 or 2.

I believe you're correct - I don't think Thameslink drivers sign the south shunt. There is a north shunt available and I think all Southern drivers that sign that neck of the woods are supposed to be able to do that.

Re the platform 4 incidents, one was a person refusing to leave a terminating train and eventually had to be removed. The other was an issue with the newly painted non-slip yellow line at that platform which turned out to be extremely slippery when dried. A line block was taken while the contractors were summoned back and the work was all redone.

 

[Surreytraveller]

Presumably Peterborough drivers don't sign the shunt at the south end? I'd expect all Southern drivers that go to Horsham would do. Is it possible to shunt via the north end? That used to happen but I'm going back decades.

What were the incidents that took out platform 4? I remember in the late 1990s a pair of class 319s refused to split and blocked platform 4 for hours. Meanwhile the stoppers via Gatwick went into platform 3 and then shunted across to platform 1 or 2.

Not all Southern drivers go south of Horsham. Some won't sign the shunt the Three Bridges side either