on the first point about, its down to fcc to plan a service, i can tell you they wanted to run more than a half hourly all station service, but NR would not let them, the reason given was that NR wanted as many points at junctions to stay in the same position, this would stop all the point failures due to frozen points, so there would then be no benefit from running a semi-fast service, which would then follow an all station service.
for your infomation we do abit off traveling on the cushions already, you just cant set up a pnb point at east croydon or gatwick airport its just not that simple, first of all there needs to be a room with kitchen facillities, so we can cook our lunch, their also needs to be toilets. the nearest pnb points to East croydon are selhurst depot/purley, but we are not allowed to use purley so it would mean getting on a southern service from east croydon to selhurt, then walking to the depot, have you pnb then do the same in reverse this would take in excess of an hour. At gatwick airport the nearest pnb point is three bridges or redhill but again we do not use redhill, so a round trip from gatwick to three bridges wouls also be nearly an hour.
As i predicted in the other disruption thread that the service would end up with an all stations bedford - brighton service every half hour, or a weekend style split service, the benefit off an all stations service is that ALL stations get a half hourly service, why should someone at say elstree get less of a service during disruption than say someone from St Albans.
What can NR do stop snow from falling, of cause they can not, but there are other options open to them, as was the case they had units and class 73's running round as ghost trains trying there best to keep the job going and tracks clear but the snow was just to heavy, to give an example i followed a 12 car 377 by a few minutes but in that time the track and juice rail were already covered in a layer of snow and begining to freeze as the line light was flickering, now it there had not been a train over that line for say 15 minutes then in that time the juice rail will have been frozen.
Most passengers north of St pancras do have other options the only stations that do not are elstree, radlett, harpenden, harlington, flitwick the stations south of mill hill have london underground and london buses, passengers st albans could use london midland on the abbey line or fcc out of kings cross to hatfield then use the bus that links the station, and stations north of luton can use there tickets on EMT services to luton (ticket easment is still in place)then change to fcc serfvices.
