North Downs Sunday Timetable

[whole diary]

[Steve Bray]

In the new timetable, the departure time from Reading was moved from xx03 to either xx18 or xx20 (apart from the 0603 and 0703 services which curiously remain unchanged). In the previous timetable, when it was necessary to terminate trains at either Reigate or Redhill, the xx03 would make a quick turnaround and head back to Reading enabling just 3 trains to perform this route. However with this new schedule, this is not possible, and for instance today requires 4 trains to operate. I don't know the first thing about railway economics but presumable a consequence of the retimings, must make it more expensive for First to operate this service when there is engineering work beyond either Reigate or Redhill.

Secondly, at Redhill, the terminating service (and return starting service), happens right at the London end of Platform 1 - as far away from the platform exit as possible. (For those of you are not familiar with Redhill, its similar to the experiment at Oxford station last year when for a while the stopping service from Paddington had to stop at the very end of the platform). Anyway, for Gatwick bound passengers who have to drag their suitcases the entire length of the platform, before going down stairs then through the subway and up the stairs to platform 3 for Gatwick, this is not at all convenient. Some passengers were savvy enough to be aware that there was a good connection to Gatwick, but there were 20 or so pax who missed this by around 30 seconds and had to wait 20 minutes for the next Gatwick service; had the previous timetable been in operation, this would not have happened as the Reading service could have arrived and departed from Platform 1B.

I guess it must be down to signalling peculiarities at Redhill why it is not possible for the trains to drop passengers off on Platform 1B, and then move empty down the platform to 1A. Currently, operating procedures appear to be more important than passenger convenience.