Capvermell
On Moderation
- Joined
- 5 Jan 2014
- Messages
- 349
On Monday 20th and Tuesday 21st October I arrived at Victoria station to get my usual 2325 train home to Ockley only to find that on Monday evening, my 2325 was shown as Cancelled on the train departure boards while on Tuesday evening, 21st October, the train mysteriously simply wasn't listed on the departure boards at all. But as I understand it the cancellation of my train occurred on both days due to a points failure near Battersea Park that made it impossible for trains to run into at least platforms 9 to 13 of Victoria and possibly also 14 and/or 15 but definitely not 16 to 19 for over 24 hours.
On each night I then had to make enquiries about how to get home and almost none of the pink jacketed Victoria Station staff, who worked for network rail, seemed to have any clue at all about the cause of the multiple train cancellations or any idea how I should get home but all the southern railway jacketed platform staff had disappeared at this time of day as they usually open up the automated ticket barriers at Victoria and disappear off home around 11 PM so that at time of night absolutely no one represents Southern and of course the station is in any case managed by Network Rail and not by Southern or Southeastern.
But on the station boards at Victoria nothing was shown about how I should get home or that I had to get the 2348 train to Sutton, on the slow loop via Norbury and from there get an around midnight 36 rail replacement bus from Sutton to Horsham that I can only describe as being a tortuous nightmare as it was an extremely, uncomfortable, cold old rattly, probably Alexander Dennis Single Decker bus that crashed and banged through every single bump in the road and it also took over an hour and 10 minutes to do the journey of 20 miles that in an Uber takes around 30 minutes from Sutton Station or by train takes 40 minutes.
As on both nights a train to Horsham via Three Bridges was still running and would have got me to Horsham in just over an hour, from where it's then only approximately a 10 minute taxi ride the 7 miles north to my home in Capel, near Ockley station, I also really wished that I could have used that option if Southern would have paid for the taxi via its usual taxi broker supplier called CMAC. But I couldn't do that so I had to take the long and tortuous rail replacement bus journey instead, that got me home around 0155, instead of 0055 in the morning via the usual train to Ockley and then a 17 minute walk to my home.
Today I've visited the railforums and I have been absolutely staggered to find absolutely no discussion of this major points failure that disabled all services normally running to at least platforms 9 to 13 between some time on Monday afternoon 20th October and the end of the day on Tuesday 21st October. And no explanation at all provided by Network Rail at the time or subsequently to explain why they couldn't fix a simple points failure at one location on the network , with hugely disabling consequences, for well over 24 hours. And all this only one week after I had to abandon a trip to London from Ockley on the 0926 train to Victoria on Monday 13th October when a Network Rail bulldozer got stuck on the line near Clapham Junction during overnight works and had to be shifted by lifting equipment causing all trains to and from Horsham via Dorking and Three Bridges to be cancelled for hours in a row. I tried to get a taxi to work around this but unfortunately none were available due to the level of customer demand.
I would really like to get some better idea from experts here of why trains running into platforms 9 to 13 or possibly also 14 or 15 at Victoria, but definitely not platforms 16 to 19, were simply cancelled completely by southern for over a day, rather than running them to say Clapham Junction and terminating there and running back down-the-line so that customers could then hop on one of the trains that was still running in to platforms 15 to 19 to Victoria, to complete their journeys. Instead all trains normally running in to at least platforms 9 to 13 were completely cancelled from their origin to Victoria, which to me seems a very unreasonable and an unintelligent way to handle this prolonged point's failure, which also should not in any case have lasted for well over 24 hours.
I am therefore making this post in the hope that one of the knowledgeable users of the railforums will be able to enlighten me on the nature of the points failure occurring on Monday and Tuesday 20th and 21st October that caused so many southern trains to be cancelled and took so unreasonably long to fix. Also, I would be grateful for any reasonable explanation as to my 2325 train to Horsham via Sutton and Dorking on Tuesday evening was simply not listed on the departure boards at all at Victoria Station. Instead It had simply been vaporised completly by Southern from their train information systems. Also when Southern was running a rail replacement bus from Sutton to Horsham why was it incapable of showing that information on their train departure display boards at Victoria and/or of making audio announcements to inform passengers that was the case.
I look forward to receiving further illumination on the what I regard as being this very major and prolonged points failure somew near Battersea Park.
On each night I then had to make enquiries about how to get home and almost none of the pink jacketed Victoria Station staff, who worked for network rail, seemed to have any clue at all about the cause of the multiple train cancellations or any idea how I should get home but all the southern railway jacketed platform staff had disappeared at this time of day as they usually open up the automated ticket barriers at Victoria and disappear off home around 11 PM so that at time of night absolutely no one represents Southern and of course the station is in any case managed by Network Rail and not by Southern or Southeastern.
But on the station boards at Victoria nothing was shown about how I should get home or that I had to get the 2348 train to Sutton, on the slow loop via Norbury and from there get an around midnight 36 rail replacement bus from Sutton to Horsham that I can only describe as being a tortuous nightmare as it was an extremely, uncomfortable, cold old rattly, probably Alexander Dennis Single Decker bus that crashed and banged through every single bump in the road and it also took over an hour and 10 minutes to do the journey of 20 miles that in an Uber takes around 30 minutes from Sutton Station or by train takes 40 minutes.
As on both nights a train to Horsham via Three Bridges was still running and would have got me to Horsham in just over an hour, from where it's then only approximately a 10 minute taxi ride the 7 miles north to my home in Capel, near Ockley station, I also really wished that I could have used that option if Southern would have paid for the taxi via its usual taxi broker supplier called CMAC. But I couldn't do that so I had to take the long and tortuous rail replacement bus journey instead, that got me home around 0155, instead of 0055 in the morning via the usual train to Ockley and then a 17 minute walk to my home.
Today I've visited the railforums and I have been absolutely staggered to find absolutely no discussion of this major points failure that disabled all services normally running to at least platforms 9 to 13 between some time on Monday afternoon 20th October and the end of the day on Tuesday 21st October. And no explanation at all provided by Network Rail at the time or subsequently to explain why they couldn't fix a simple points failure at one location on the network , with hugely disabling consequences, for well over 24 hours. And all this only one week after I had to abandon a trip to London from Ockley on the 0926 train to Victoria on Monday 13th October when a Network Rail bulldozer got stuck on the line near Clapham Junction during overnight works and had to be shifted by lifting equipment causing all trains to and from Horsham via Dorking and Three Bridges to be cancelled for hours in a row. I tried to get a taxi to work around this but unfortunately none were available due to the level of customer demand.
I would really like to get some better idea from experts here of why trains running into platforms 9 to 13 or possibly also 14 or 15 at Victoria, but definitely not platforms 16 to 19, were simply cancelled completely by southern for over a day, rather than running them to say Clapham Junction and terminating there and running back down-the-line so that customers could then hop on one of the trains that was still running in to platforms 15 to 19 to Victoria, to complete their journeys. Instead all trains normally running in to at least platforms 9 to 13 were completely cancelled from their origin to Victoria, which to me seems a very unreasonable and an unintelligent way to handle this prolonged point's failure, which also should not in any case have lasted for well over 24 hours.
I am therefore making this post in the hope that one of the knowledgeable users of the railforums will be able to enlighten me on the nature of the points failure occurring on Monday and Tuesday 20th and 21st October that caused so many southern trains to be cancelled and took so unreasonably long to fix. Also, I would be grateful for any reasonable explanation as to my 2325 train to Horsham via Sutton and Dorking on Tuesday evening was simply not listed on the departure boards at all at Victoria Station. Instead It had simply been vaporised completly by Southern from their train information systems. Also when Southern was running a rail replacement bus from Sutton to Horsham why was it incapable of showing that information on their train departure display boards at Victoria and/or of making audio announcements to inform passengers that was the case.
I look forward to receiving further illumination on the what I regard as being this very major and prolonged points failure somew near Battersea Park.
