Southern Railway finally put an executive in front of MarshLink Action Group (MLAG) members, to discuss what their views are on a woeful service – and, in particular, missed connections with the High Speed at Ashford (pictured above). David Walker, head of the revenue department, failed to turn up for the action group’s annual meeting in March after his car suffered a flat tyre, but David Scorey, deputy managing director, did make it to a re-scheduled meeting.
Southern’s poor performance was the issue members were keen to hear about and the performance figures Scorey supplied showed a considerable number of cancelled services each month. Each cancellation represented missed connections and a general messing up of each passenger’s schedule for the day. Scorey said the cancellations were due to unit failures and also to driver illnesses (possibly linked to demands for improved terms for drivers).
As far as the diesel fleet is concerned, Southern maintains that its fleet had, until recently, one of the best levels of reliability in the UK. But, as we know to our cost, with a fleet of only five units on the Marshlink, operating a long line between Ashford and Brighton, any unit failure has immediate consequences – and the first point of impact is the Rye Shuttle.
MLAG maintains that the first impact should be on the Uckfield service, because they have such a large fleet, especially with the additional units they are soon to receive. Scorey puts it the other way around and suggests, without commitment, that – as a result of Uckfield having the additional units – when there is a failure on its line, we are less likely to have one of our units commandeered to maintain the Uckfield service. But this still leaves our line exposed to the consequences of one of the five units failing.
After his presentation, Scorey took part in a Q&A session:
Q: Connections at Ashford with HS1 under revised Sunday timetable pattern?
A: The new timetable, due in May, would lose the current good connections with HS1 trains at Ashford. Trains to Ashford would leave 8 minutes earlier adding that time to the journey. On return, trains would leave Ashford 8 minutes earlier, which misses the connection from St Pancras, thus adding 24 minutes to the journey because of the need to catch an earlier train from London. (It is not yet clear if the time of the last Sunday train from Ashford has also been brought forward). The change had been necessitated by operational needs at Eastbourne and Brighton, and unfortunately timetabling was extremely complex with changes having knock on effects.
Q: Capacity issues on East Coastway and no additional stock as in case of Uckfield line?
A: East Coastway Marshlink was not identified in the franchise tender as needing additional capacity. Uckfield line was identified, hence ten car trains being introduced. Southern now runs under management contract with Department for Transport (DfT) so little room to do anything without DfT approval.
Q. Can London Bridge cope with traffic forecasts long-term, with reduced capacity on both approach lines and platforms?
A. In 2018 there would be sufficient capacity as they would have six platforms for terminating services, plus many services would run through to Thameslink.
Q. Reliability of Marshlink service up to introduction of the Javelin service
A. The possible upgrade of the line to carry Javelin trains to Bexhill is outside Southern’s remit – and this is not likely to happen before 2020.
Q. What is the sense in maintaining East Coastway stock at Selhurst which is nowhere near the route? Were there plans for additional facilities to be made available at St Leonards or Ashford for component changing ? (this was after Scorey had described the generator problems experienced recently)
A. Light maintenance was carried out by Hastings Diesels Ltd (HDL) at St Leonards West Marina. There is no facility at Ashford. Stock spares and engineers continue to be at Selhurst where the rest of the Southern fleet is maintained. It would not improve the speed of repair (as suggested by an attendee) to diagnose a problem at St Leonards and ferry spare parts required there.
Q. What is the best way to make the case for increased capacity to DfT as there was no provision within contract? What is the incentive for Southern to improve matters, as they had no additional revenue gain?
A. It was for Southern and User Groups to make a case. Southern had to meet customer satisfaction targets.
Q. Were DfT amenable to such cases?
A. “Yes” if case could be justified – value to money for taxpayers was the bottom line.
Q. Can we have a written connection policy for Ashford Station? (The point was made that, a few years ago, when a down train arrived late, the Marshlink would be held for up to five minutes to make the connection. But this no longer happens despite there now being faster line speeds between Ashford and Rye. It also concerned people that trains often waited at Rye for several minutes, having not waited at Ashford for the incoming connection.)
A. Operational logistics made it very difficult to hold up trains without causing problems further down the line. If trains did not have to run all the way to Brighton (the consultation suggesting cutting the service at Eastbourne or Hastings) it might be possible to be more flexible, but the consultations had shown passengers wanted a full through service.
Scorey was adamant that there was no leeway for Southern trains to be held, although he was not a timetable planner but an engineer – and he did not seem to understand that the only bit affected was Ashford–Rye, despite the point being repeated by the audience.
Q. There seems to be little communication between Southern and South Eastern
A. It seemed there were problems, particularly at Ashford, where little information was available when there were problems with Marshlink. Work was going on at an operational level to improve communication between the two companies at Ashford, and at Hastings and Tonbridge which were also South Eastern stations.
Q. When will the Sunday stopping pattern be reintroduced to Three Oaks and Winchelsea ?
A. It was hoped that a two hourly stopping service similar to the week day service would be reinstated on Sundays, but not before the December 2015 timetable.
Q. We would like a later train
A. It would be difficult to run trains any later than at present (20.30 from Brighton, 22.30 from Ashford) because of Network Rail constraints on maintenance and the need to return trains to base for cleaning in time for the morning service.
Q. Ashford South Eastern and Southern liaison. What would happen if the last train was cancelled?
A. We will get you home. South Eastern Ashford would liaise with Southern Station Manager (SM) at Eastbourne who would authorise taxis.
Q. Appledore Station car park is now full on weekdays – any possibility of using former yard?
A. I will investigate with SM Eastbourne
Q. Rye Bonfire Society asked/insisted that Southern could be represented at their planning/safety advisory group meetings?
A. SM Eastbourne will liaise and attend.
To a question from the Rye Bonfire Society, Scorey confirmed that Southern would liaise over matters such as safety and train provision. (The questioner seemed to worry that too many outsiders were arriving on extra trains and causing the Society expensive problems of crowd control etc).
Q. Acceptance of Southern tickets on Stagecoach buses, which happened in times of disruption to the west of the area, but not in Hastings. For example, tickets were not accepted on bus services to Ashford.
A. I will investigate with Stagecoach.
Q. Passengers travelling on the HS1 from Ashford are also paying high speed rates (i.e. extra per mile) on the connecting Marshlink service when in fairness they should only pay the supplement for the Ashford to London HS1 line. Why ?
A. I am unaware of this and promise to check this out.
Photo: Tony Nunn