Great British Railway Jouneys (TV)

[railfan99]

Last night I watched two Series 15 Great British Railway Journeys, one of which was 2024's Havant to Guildford. This screened in the UK in March.

As often seems the case, Michael Portillo travelled in a near empty train, using Haslemere station that according to Wiki has about 600,000 passengers a year alighting and a similar number boarding.

From what one could see of the unit, there was one other passenger further down in the same carriage.

Portillo and his crew may be travelling offpeak, or on stopping all stations trains that are avoided by those wishing to get to major destinations faster, but why aren't the trains he uses better loaded with travellers?

A couple of other shots in these episodes showed users going into a station or in one case about to use a ticket machine, so there must be others patronising the trains.

I doubt TOCs such as Southwestern Railway operate special trains just for him, although 'thanks' were in the credits.

 

[DelW]

As a regular traveller on that line, there are big variations in how busy the trains are. Up trains in the morning peak and down trains in the evening peak are usually well filled, though standing-room-only is unusual south of Guildford. Mid to late evening trains out of London can also be very busy.

Much depends on the length of the train, as services can have 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 or 12 coaches. If the TV crew wanted a quiet train, as I assume they would, a full length counter-peak train would be likely to provide that, e.g. a 12 coach train that had formed a busy service from Waterloo making its return up from Portsmouth. I'd expect to be able to find a pretty empty coach on that. In the daytime, some off-peak services have 12 coaches for stock positioning reasons, even though usual passenger numbers don't require that long a train.

Haslemere itself is quite a small town, though it's a railhead for a prosperous rural area. However a lot of its patronage was commuters, many of them in senior managerial or professional jobs, for whom working from home for part or all of the week has become normal. That has hit revenue on the route quite severely, with high value season ticket sales being well down on pre Covid. The timetable is still reduced as a consequence, meaning uneven 15/30 minute gaps between trains, which exacerbates variations in passenger loading between services.

 

[railfan99]

Thanks. Late last year I travelled on a poorly patronised offpeak train from Clapham Junction to East Grinstead, mirroring your comprehensive reply.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

There are very many examples of Portillo travelling on busy services in other episodes, even to the extent of sometimes having to do pieces to camera with another passenger sitting alongside him. This happens on his overseas travels too.