Speeding up the Southern Region

[LE Greys]

Is it possible?

The fastest service in 3rd rail land runs at 100 mph, and covers the 24 miles from Waterloo to Woking in 26 minutes. That's comparative with London-Stevenage by 365, 27 miles in 25 minutes including a stop at Finsbury Park. In other words, the expresses south of the Thames are as fast as the suburban trains north of the Thames. Many of the slower trains stop everywhere, because they need to cover far more stops than in the other regions.

Basically, is it possible to make this go any faster? 100 is probably the limit in terms of maximum speed, but what about pulling stops? Are there places where an extra pair of lines or flying junctions would allow this to happen? For instance, quadrupling Three Bridges-Brighton (Balcombe Viaduct might present a few problems). Personally, I don't think so, but the low speeds of Southern Region lines don't compare very well with the rest of the country.

 

[thefab444]

Is it possible?

The fastest service in 3rd rail land runs at 100 mph, and covers the 24 miles from Waterloo to Woking in 26 minutes.

The fastest time Waterloo - Woking is 23 minutes. Services not stopping at Woking are similarly booked 23 minutes, although it can be achieved 21-22.

Waterloo - Woking is all 90mph anyway. 100mph on the down starts at Farnborough.

 

[LE Greys]

The fastest time Waterloo - Woking is 23 minutes. Services not stopping at Woking are similarly booked 23 minutes, although it can be achieved 21-22.

Waterloo - Woking is all 90mph anyway. 100mph on the down starts at Farnborough.

OK, take Basingstoke-Winchester (Class 444, 18.5 miles, typical time 15 mins) and compare it with Finsbury Park-Stevenage (Class 365, 25 miles, typical time 18 mins). The SWT express achieves an average speed of 74 mph, the FCC semi-fast achieves 83 mph. Even allowing for the extra three minutes of 100 mph, that doesn't really make sense. So what to do about it? Short of re-electrifying with overhead wires, it might be possible to quadruple most of that section, including the tunnels at Micheldever, by running the fast lines on the outside. Not sure whether that will help speed things up, but it will certainly keep the Freightliners out of the way. Unfortunately, quadrupling through Winchester doesn't look possible. Besides, the section down to Eastleigh would rely on having the slow lines on the outside. This does give the option of upgrading to 125, but only for the Voyagers (one per hour each way, so not much gain). Boosting the voltage as high as 1,000 might work, but that risks damaging electrical equipment (if it's possible at all, I don't know).

The basic problem everywhere else is that the frequency is so high and station-to-station times are so low that any speed-up is impossible. The only real way to solve that is by adding lines in crucial sections, for which there is usually no space. Any other ideas?

 

[Malderon]

I was just posting about this in the HS2 topic.

Certainly I would love the Southern region sped up but you can understand the problems with it. On my peak time service its not about number of stops, its solely about capacity and line speed restriction I think.

The calling pattern is (06:29), Chichester (where I board), Barnham, Horsham, Crawley, Three Bridges (where the train is usually attached to coaches that I believe come from Brighton), East Croydon, (where I get off) and then on to Clapham Junction and London Victoria.

That stopping schedule is really quite restrictive and bypasses stations that are usually stopped at offpeak, such as Gatwick, Horley, Redhill, as well of bypassing all stations between Horsham and Barnham (although this is common to every train to/from Chichester as most split/join at Horsham with a stopping service). Its scheduled to take about an hour and 10 minutes (CCH to ECR), for what is 47 miles by road (I'm not sure how far by track but should be around 50 miles as the road route follows a similar path). And it usually runs around 5 minutes late, almost every day, usually because the Brighton train we are supposed to join to is late getting into three bridges.

I am not an expert by any means but I can only guess that the Arun Valley line is severely restricted in terms of signalling and speed. Would it be possible to improve this?

I think I heard something of reinstating a section of track between Littlehampton and Arundel (Arundel chord?), modernising the Arun Valley lines, and then running Littlehampton - Victoria stopping services up the Arun Valley, with more fast services for Portsmouth/Southampton/Bognor (possibly also running faster as well as more frequently if the Arun Valley was modernized).

I thought this was perhaps a way of relieving capacity on the Brighton Mainline as currently there is a fairly slow service running down there Victoria-Littlehampton via Hove.

It also pains me a bit to see 4/5 empty gatwick expresses taking up a precious East Croydon slot every 15 minutes!

 

[Mark_re]

I suppose we are taking account of SWT's timetable? - It is fairly ludicrously padded, with trains regularly arriving up to 4 minutes early at Winchester, for example.

Apart from the timetable, whenever I go up to Waterloo I always seem to get signal checked outside Farnborough and often pass Basingstoke at about 30 mph. I guess congestion will always make it difficult to plan a robust faster timetable?

 

[wintonian]

I suppose we are taking account of SWT's timetable? - It is fairly ludicrously padded, with trains regularly arriving up to 4 minutes early at Winchester, for example.

Apart from the timetable, whenever I go up to Waterloo I always seem to get signal checked outside Farnborough and often pass Basingstoke at about 30 mph. I guess congestion will always make it difficult to plan a robust faster timetable?

I normally find it coming into Basingstoke and arrond Brookwood more often than Farnborough.

 

[tbtc]

It also pains me a bit to see 4/5 empty gatwick expresses taking up a precious East Croydon slot every 15 minutes!

There really is no justification for Gatwick Express running around so empty whilst other Southern/ FCC services are so full

Otherwise, the problems on the old Southern Region are because its a victim of its own success. There is no spare capacity, there are no spare lines. And speeding up some services will only waste capacity and catch up the train in front faster...

 

[notadriver]

Just a quick observation. On SWT the Class 444s and 450s seem very sluggish pulling away. I was at Brockenhurst watching a Voyager racing out making these units seem pedestrian. If electrical supplies could be boosted (more substations?) then restoring the performance of these units akin to the class 350s north of the river may see an improvement in times.

 

[ushawk]

Maybe decrease the Gatwick Express to every 15 or 20 minutes, not entirely scrap it (even though it is only 5 minutes faster than the fastest Southern service to Gatwick from Victoria).

Decreasing it could few up a couple of spaces on the line. I would also terminate all the FGW services to/from Gatwick at Redhill. Would free up a slot on the Redhill line.

 

[swt_passenger]

I think I heard something of reinstating a section of track between Littlehampton and Arundel (Arundel chord?), modernising the Arun Valley lines, and then running Littlehampton - Victoria stopping services up the Arun Valley, with more fast services for Portsmouth/Southampton/Bognor (possibly also running faster as well as more frequently if the Arun Valley was modernized).

Trains can already run from Littlehampton to Arundel, the missing chord people often refer to is to allow trains to run from Angmering to Arundel without having to reverse via Littlehampton. I don't think NR see any major benefits though, from what I've seen in the Sussex route utilisation strategy:

Linked to this initiative, others suggested
construction of an Arundel Chord to allow West
Coastway to London services to be routed via
the Arun Valley at times of engineering works
on the BML and possibly even to generate
additional peak capacity. The RUS has not
supported this option for two reasons. Firstly,
as outlined in 8.3.4.3, routing of additional
services via the Arun Valley, Dorking and
Sutton in the peak is unlikely to generate
additional capacity. Secondly, even during
weekend disruption on the BML, journey
times from the eastern end of the West
Coastway, i.e. the Brighton and Hove area
would not be attractive via this route

You're quite right about the limited headways on the Arun Valley though, with it being absolute block with long sections the offpeak 2 tph fast and 2 tph stoppers joining at Horsham is probably about all it can cope reliablyuntil resignalled.

 

[ushawk]

I dont know if Littlehampton to Victoria services run via Hove and attach to the Eastbourne/Ore trains to provide extra capacity. I think that might be why they do that.

 

[taxidave]

As one who lives out in the sticks, rural Cheltenham, I have to question your desire to cut journey times. Are you so obsessed with time that a couple of minutes less travelling is going to make such a difference to your life. Perhaps you should come and join us out here in the quiet countryside and enjoy life a little more.

 

[Viscount]

Gatwick Express and Southern are now one and the same company (Southern took over the operation of GE). During the day the service operates at 15 minute intervals with a 30 minute journey time. Some services are already extended beyond Gatwick Airport to provide relief to existing Southern services.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

In the days of the REP-TC sets, when one per hour was booked non-stop from Southampton ( Main ) to Waterloo and vice-versa, you could get some fantastic timings. The line was less intensely used then as well.

I remember one particular occasion when the late Jack Rolls ( a very nice bloke - why are all the nice ones taken so soon? ) whisked me from Southampton to Waterloo in under an hour despite having to wait for a platform outside Waterloo for nigh on five minutes.

 

[LE Greys]

Not the only place where times have slowed down. As I understand it, the Capital-Coast Express on the Brighton Line used to do the run in 45 minutes, and the current fastest time is 48. That would probably be a stop at Croydon or Brighton, but surely the extra acceleration of modern stock should make up for that even without running at 100 mph.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Trains can already run from Littlehampton to Arundel, the missing chord people often refer to is to allow trains to run from Angmering to Arundel without having to reverse via Littlehampton. I don't think NR see any major benefits though, from what I've seen in the Sussex route utilisation strategy:



You're quite right about the limited headways on the Arun Valley though, with it being absolute block with long sections the offpeak 2 tph fast and 2 tph stoppers joining at Horsham is probably about all it can cope reliablyuntil resignalled.

That's curious. I don't know much about the Arun Valley line, having only been to Arundel a few times (to see Yorkshire play Sussex last time). Absolute block signalling really ought to be modernised by now, it is a bit of an anachronism, and that would certainly help. Widespread resignalling would be a very good idea, and might help in a general speed-up.

 

[Helvellyn]

I suppose we are taking account of SWT's timetable? - It is fairly ludicrously padded, with trains regularly arriving up to 4 minutes early at Winchester, for example.

Apart from the timetable, whenever I go up to Waterloo I always seem to get signal checked outside Farnborough and often pass Basingstoke at about 30 mph. I guess congestion will always make it difficult to plan a robust faster timetable?

Some of this recovery time is needed to maintain the robustness of the timetable. It's so intensive, especially in the peak, that trains need to be pretty much guaranteed to arrive on time at pinch points to avoid knock on delays affecting a lot of other services (due to headways).

On the SWML, Woking, Basingstoke and Southampton are all pinch points: -

• Woking could do with a flyover for the Portsmouth Lines to remove the flat junction (The Southern had the land, but BR sold it off for housing).
• Basingstoke doesn't have room for a flyover, but if the Great Western lines were reinstated through the back of the station then an additional fifth track could be in use for a few miles south of the station, allowing freight to be "looped" before crossing to the down lines.
• Southampton's big capacity problem is Southampton Tunnel. Movements are intensive, not helped by the platforms being so heavily used as well.