Travelling to Brighton on strike day

[Aaron1]

Hi,
I appreciate there is a lot still to be decided regarding timetables for the upcoming RMT strikes but I am hoping a few people will be able to advise on what may happen based on past experience.

So I will need to travel to and from Brighton from either Nottinham/Doncaster or Manchester on likely to be 17/03-20/03 which is obviously during the RMT strikes, I assume there will be some services running from to and from Nottingham/Donny and Manchester to London on all of these days as these are major routes Please note this is just RMT strike and not Aslef so I doubt everything will be cancelled, but would trains be running from London to Brighton? I don't mind getting National express coach to and from Brighton from London.

Does anybody know when the final timetables are likely to be announced for these dates?

Any advice based on past experience would be appreciated please so I can make my arrangements early enough!

Thanks

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Mar 2023 ==

Sorry I should have added I am happy to travel on the Friday and come back Sunday or Monday, thus avoiding the actual strike days but I appreciate services will still be affected on these dates

 

[JonathanH]

18/03 is just RMT TOC employees, no signallers taking action, so may not affect Thameslink services in any significant way, given they are already driver only.

What may be more of an issue is how the Network Rail overtime ban between 17 March and 23 March is handled, and whether this leads to reduced hours of operation, but this is maintenance staff rather than operations.

 

[sheff1]

I landed at Gatwick on a strike day morning last autumn and a very frequent train service was operating between Brighton & London (despite notices at the airport itself implying there was next to no service)

 

[paul1609]

The national express coach to Brighton is very much the last resort I would say. Its basically a Victoria-Heathrow-Gatwick-Brighton service that takes 4 hours.
The road corridor out to the south (A23) is just about the worst there is from Central London

 

[miklcct]

The national express coach to Brighton is very much the last resort I would say. Its basically a Victoria-Heathrow-Gatwick-Brighton service that takes 4 hours.
The road corridor out to the south (A23) is just about the worst there is from Central London

At a very last resort, when you run out of options, you can use the National Express between Gatwick and Brighton and use local buses (405 Croydon - Redhill, then 100 Redhill - Gatwick) all the way from Brixton to Gatwick Airport, in order to avoid the detour to Heathrow.

 

[Alex365Dash]

At a very last resort, when you run out of options, you can use the National Express between Gatwick and Brighton and use local buses (405 Croydon - Redhill, then 100 Redhill - Gatwick) all the way from Brixton to Gatwick Airport, in order to avoid the detour to Heathrow.

I don’t think the 405 runs from Brixton
I’d say catch the Victoria line to Stockwell, Northern line to South Wimbledon, tram to East Croydon then 405 to Gatwick and 100 to Redhill?

That said, it appears looking at journey options that the NatEx 025 is quicker from Victoria to Gatwick and therefore Brighton, although still fairly slow!

 

[JonathanH]

I don’t think the 405 runs from Brixton

No, but the 109 does, and connects in Croydon with the 405.

There are other combinations of routes for travelling from Victoria to Redhill - 44 to Tooting / 127 to Purley / 405 to Redhill, 2 to West Norwood / 468 to Croydon / 405 to Redhill.

I’d say catch the Victoria line to Brixton, Northern line to South Wimbledon, tram to East Croydon then 405 to Redhill and 100 to Gatwick?

That is a reasonably efficient way of doing it, although the 400 and 460 are quicker between Redhill and Gatwick, as they don't deviate from the A23 to serve Horley.