London Waterloo - station, services, facilities, incidents - and some quirks / odd facts (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Brucey]

Person hit by a train at South Croydon earlier resulted in considerable delays on all routes from London to Southampton and Portsmouth.  That is in addition to the engineering work already planned between Haslemere-Petersfield.

[MrC]

Or next Sunday - the London Marathon....

Oops. Work not carried out due to on-site equipment failure and currently proposed to be re-scheduled for 20/21.......

[Brucey]

B****r.  I am making several tight connections through Waterloo on both Saturday and Sunday next week.

Here is the official info from SWT^▸ (South West Trains): http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/MEW.aspx

Copied here, for when the website is updated:

Work was due to take place on 13/14 April to repair a rail defect in the Waterloo area. This was a major piece of work that needed around 16 hours to complete and this work had been scheduled to take place at the earliest possible opportunity.

Unfortunately due to a problem with the technical equipment being used by our external contractors carrying the work, the work could not be completed over the weekend. These technical equipment problems were only uncovered as the work commenced.

We are extremely disappointed that this work could not take place as planned and we are following this up with our external contractors as a matter of priority.

The work is now being planned to take place at the next possible opportunity and to ensure the least amount of impact on our customers.  The work is currently scheduled to take place over the weekend of 20/21 April.  We will confirm more details about the impact this major engineering work will have on our services early next week.  In the meantime, our dedicated team of engineers will continue to monitor the area to enable us to continue to deliver our normal train service.

At this stage, we are not expecting this to have any impact on any of our services over the coming week, and we are planning to run our full train service on Monday 15 April.   We will keep you informed of any further changes needed to facilitate this major engineering work.

Laughable is an understatement.

[ChrisB]

And how many 000's of marathon runners wont niw be able to use the trains to get into London. Reckon there's going to be trouble ahead....

[Brucey]

It will be interesting to see the revised timetable.  One would hope the bulk of the work will be done overnight.

[Brucey]

The amended timetable has been released at http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/MEW.aspx

I won't copy the entire timetable here, just the summary is included below:

Work was due to take place on 13/14 April to repair a rail defect in the Waterloo area. This was a major piece of work that needed around 16 hours to complete.

Unfortunately due to a problem with the technical equipment supplied by our external contractors, the work could not be completed on 13/14 April.

The work has now been planned to take place on Sunday 21st April. Customers with advance tickets that are booked to travel on specific trains are able to use other services as  fare restrictions have been lifted on Sunday 21 April.  A normal Saturday train service will run on Saturday 20th April.

The access required by the engineers will mean that platforms 1 to 10 at London Waterloo will be out of use on Sunday 21 April until approximately 16:00hrs.

A very limited train service will run out of London Waterloo as a result of this work.

Once the work has been completed at 1600hrs a full Sunday service will operate with some trains formed of more coaches than normal.

This work will be taking place in addition to our regular programme of engineering improvement work. Please check here to see how these works may also affect your journey.

London Marathon Participant / Spectator Advice

We strongly advise customers travelling on our services to check before you travel and allow more time to complete your journey. This is due to a significant reduction in the number of trains we can run into and out of London Waterloo until 1600hrs due to the work taking place; we expect all services running into London Waterloo will be extremely busy.

Alterations to your Train Service

Please use the expandable links below for more details about the service on Sunday 21 April. Please also note that our timetable is being amended to reflect these alterations and this information is currently not showing in the online Journey Planners. This will be available on Thursday 18 April.

[johngreg]

Given the fact that Platform 20 is apparently coming back into use next year, what is the difference with this platform to the others?

http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/Historic-journey-marks-the-first-anniversary-of-the-South-West-Trains-and-Network-Rail-Alliance.aspx

[stuving]

I think it can be accessed on the level from 19. For the others they would need to rebuild what is now access from underneath.

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

Why is it necessary to rebuild? It was always easy enough to move to and from domestic and the international trains in the days of Eurostar use. Most people arriving or departing Waterloo go to or from the outside world simply because it is a terminus. There can be some domestic transfer traffic but how much is that of the total movements?

[Brucey]

The international platforms (except 20) all require access via an escalator or stairs to the concourse below.

Being a Waterloo commuter, I can imagine the chaos if you tried to fit as 12 coach Class 450 of passengers (over 1000 people, all of whom are in an unnecessary rush) down the few escalators that are there at present.

[Electric train]

Number of factors.
The concourses below platform level were constructed as separate arrivals and departures apparently its not easy to link them together, also they exit at low level all of which were not built to the passenger density of commuter trains
The throat for the international platforms was built for 4 per hour arrival and departure to make use of all the international platforms will require extensive throat remodelling.
There are also longer term plans being expressed by the land owners of the office buildings along York Road which could incorporate the international platforms, its likely the international station will be demolished in the longer term

[broadgage]

Due to emergency engineering work, dont know if it is heat related or something else.
Many cancellations, and other services running only part of the route.

Details on SWT^▸ (South West Trains) website.

[Brucey]

There were two issues, one at Waterloo and the other somewhere between New Malden and Surbiton on the down fast.

This was the second day of disruption for many Waterloo commuters.

[ChrisB]

First test train - a 5car 485, I think - in & out of Platform 20 this morning.

RealTime Trains has it thus

[paul7575]

It was apparently just a normal in service 455 diverted into P20 as it's been declared available for public use.  Testing and train crew familiarity runs using various stock has been going on for some months, and is still planned, looking ahead in realtime trains; but there doesn't seem to be any regular passenger services in the short term.

Photo from Paul Bigland here:  http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p368327642/h39272067#h39272067

The 458/5s are are not yet in passenger service, I wouldn't expect them to be accepted for a few weeks yet.  With the second only arriving this week I'd expect they've still got multiple working to test, and mileage accumulation etc etc.

Paul