Thameslink reliability of overnight services

[deltic]

How reliable are the early morning trains? Today for example looking at Luton Airport Parkway departures the 01:43 and 02:43 to Three Bridges and 03:43 to Brighton are cancelled, yesterday the 01:43 was cancelled, on Thursday the 01:43 and 03:43 were cancelled. Is this common and if so is there any point in operating these services? Have someone who is looking at flying into Luton, arriving around midnight and just seeing if they could still easily travel to south London if their flight is delayed.

 

[Vexed]

They've been quite unreliable for a while. They have more driver changes than the day services so more chance of a driver diagram being uncovered, and then they part cancel or cancel a whole round trip.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Looks to be rather hit and miss.

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Presume overnight engineering work somewhere along the route is the reason for some of these cancellations.

 

[Steve Harris]

Looks to be rather hit and miss.

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Presume overnight engineering work somewhere along the route is the reason for some of these cancellations.

I think your presumption might be incorrect. I have often heard announcements on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire that Thameslink services between Cambridgeshire and London may be "cancelled due to a shortage of staff". And that's on day services! So, in my list of presumptions shortage of staff would go above engineering work at this current time (normally it would be the other way around, but as it seems TL doesn'thave a full quoter of drivers at present...).

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I think your presumption might be incorrect.

Did say some of the cancellations, to be fair.

 

[RJ]

Check the service status late evening and have a backup plan, just in case.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Aug 2024 ==

Did say some of the cancellations, to be fair.

The short notice overnight cancellations are pretty much all down to staff shortages - it's usually decided what service can be run by late afternoon, by which point the cancellations and replacement buses are put into the journey planners.

 

[Horizon22]

Looks to be rather hit and miss.

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Presume overnight engineering work somewhere along the route is the reason for some of these cancellations.

If that was the case, they'd be either a) planned to not run (so nothing to cancel as it isn't in the timetable) or b) rerouted (e.g. via Herne Hill) and timed accordingly.