I wrote 2 letters.

1. To London Overground saying they need to cancel the New Cross service and use those trains to run extra West Croydon/CP services. Put on a shuttle bus between NCG and NC.


2. To Southern to say they should cancel services across the board, not just on one route. And stating that people have alternate methods is a farce because the West Croydon service is already running at capacity in peak hour.


In reply to someone saying Canada Water getting dangerously overcrowded.

Their solutions are
Close the downward escalator and make everyone go to the ticket Hall.

If that doesn't work/Jubilee is suspended, Overground services do not stop at Canada Water. Instead you have to go to Shadwell/Whitechapel.

On top of the trains not runing and the overcrowding, the very least they can do is gets their communications right. It never is.

Right now the Southern website says this for today on the homepage:

We are currently working with Network Rail to fix a signalling fault at London Bridge. Unfortunately we have had to cancel some services as follows for this evening (15 January) only:

16:14 London Bridge to Reigate
16:59 London Bridge to Horsham
17:20 London Bridge to Victoria
17:47 London Bridge to Caterham
18:21 London Bridge to Victoria
18:53 London Bridge to Victoria

But nationalrail.co.uk has these all running and on time. So, everyone turns up at London Bridge as per usual and guess what happens then.... Lessons learnt? You must be kidding.

Staggering isn't it? I know they've got antiquated IT and signalling etc etc but why should we care about all that? [/align]

Decker, do you know if that's what they are actually planning? Gulp is my reaction to closing that downward escalator.

Cancelled trains to London Bridge and then not being able to squeeze on to Overground trains meant standing on a cold platform (HOP and New Cross) from 7.15am until a lot, lot later.......very late for day 1 of my new job

If there was someone to complain to that would actually make a difference (i.e. not platform staff) then I would do....rather than moaning on here...but I suspect not.

Those cancelled trains for tonight are still running accourding to national rail enq and TfL journey planner - going to try Crofton Park via Peckham Rye, apparently only 24 mins... we'll see.

As I have said many times before, why the heck bother paying millions for a new station when you cannot leave it or get there because the signalling doesn't work.

It's like repainting a car with a seized engine and then being suprised that it doesn't work.

Has anyone asked why there is a frequent signal failure just outside of LB. I would but don't know who to ask. Anyone got a telephone number?

I think best thing to do is send an email or call the office of your local MP. They are the ones that can put pressure on people at the top. They have a team of people that have to respond to you personally. Unlike Southern/Overground who will probably just ignore you.


But also send Southern and Overground an email to express your disgust. As above, it appears Overground is catching a lot of flak from its customers, and they are putting their own pressure on Southern.


Medley - they've closed the down escalator in the past. Most recently before Christmas when LB is closed.

As part oft the Thameslink Programme, the signals which serve our line changed from London Bridge signal box to Three Bridges. These were installed over Christmas.

It's been since then that the signal failures have become more common.

Personally Network Rail need to answer questions on why these signals continue to fail and Southern for putting in too many trains in the new timetable which simply don't work.

At this rate, Southern will want no interest in serving us from London Bridge and dump as all on the already full to the brim Tokyo style trains at Canada Water.

Shutting down the Jubilee line and overground nor stopping at Canada water would probably add another 25 mins to my journey to and from work.
its a complete shambles.
I agree they should just axe the new cross route and put extra trains on the croydon/crystal palace routes or even a shuttle from Canada water going south.

It's disingenuous for LO to lay all the blame on National Rail and Southern.

LO performance has been declining since Autumn. The performance indicator posters "boasting" of trains running within 5 minutes of schedule have fallen from 96% to 92%. That's 1 in 24 trains to 1 in 12.5 trains every hour running late. That's to Dec 6 last year before the 2015 chaos. They'll get worse come the next two posters.

LO services were still late when there were no Southern trains running for that one week in August and the recent fortnight in December.

As for the extra carriages. I was impressed with the joined up thinking in having the fifth carriage in place before the London Bridge upheavals. Unfortunately, it's not on every train. I don't understand why. I bet the people waiting at Canada Water at 6pm aren't impressed when a 5-carriage New Cross train is followed by a 4-carriage West Croydon train.

I may be wrong, but I don't have the impression that there is enough of a combined operations approach at the local level. The whole transport system in London is being subject to massive disruption because of two Osymandian Grands Projets, namely Crossrail and Thameslink.

These are clearly well-planned heavily resourced exercises but they are causing enormous inconvenience across the capital, and I can't see that the same level of planning and resource has gone into minimising this. It's also questionable in my view that these projects will really bring enough benefits to the great majority of Londoners to justify the huge cost in terms not only of money but disruption over at least a decade.

Its kicking off again (I'm fortunate to be wfh today)
"Delays between Sydenham and London Bridge / Canada Water until at least 08:30

A signalling problem near New Cross Gate means journeys are being delayed by up to 20 minutes between Sydenham and London Bridge / Canada Water.

London Overground services between Crystal Palace and Highbury & Islington will not run between Crystal Palace and New Cross Gate.

London Overground services from Highbury & Islington to Crystal Palace will not run between Surrey Quays and Crystal Palace.

There is no firm estimate yet of how long disruption will last but it is likely to continue until at least 08:30."
I'm beginning to think they should close Lon Bridge completely at a weekend if that is what it takes to fix the signalling (if of course they have any idea how to fix it).

I sent a few angry tweets to Southern today (it passes the time whilst inevitably waiting for a delayed train or stuck on one that isn't moving!) - their party line is to blame Network Rail for it and directed me to this page:
http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/...-223a.aspx

Clearly there is joint culpability and it's a complicated situation but Southern seem to be exacerbating the problem by terrible patronising communication and by ill-conceived cancellations (ie ALL the W Croydon services).

All I can say is that if Southern have the guts to have another "meet the managers" session at LB in the near future they might need to hire extra security for it...

That everyone is blaming everyone else just strengthens my suspicion that there has not been the level of planning required to deal with the detailed local consequences of the big projects.

I suspect that there is a problem in joint planning for the operators in that they are paid to run specific services, and would understandably be concerned to know how their revenues would be maintained if there were to be radical restructuring of services.

For anyone who is responsible for running the whole system, there is the risk that any over-riding of contract terms to restructure services temporarily is likely to lead to large claims for compensation.

I don't know what the contracts say about the right of Network Rail or anyone else to impose an overall solution.

It would be worthwhile pursuing this through MPs and so on.

Fortunately, or maybe not, Network Rail was reclassified as a central government body on 1 September 2014. So ultimately they are answerable to MPs (or is that us?). With the elections coming up the MPs will want to be seen to be doing their bit for their favourite 'hard working families' demographic so may actually take this up on our behalf with enough pressure.

Also, Mayoral candidates get announced this year, if this continues (it will) it's worth lobbying them to get on the bandwagon too.

For what it's worth (not much) I suspect the long term plan was always to get rid of some of the Metro services from Southern's schedule, this has just given them a great excuse to hurry that along.

In respect of what MrWandle says, the fact that NR has been reclassified as a Government body means that they can be issued with a Freedom of Information request.

Thanks for the suggestion Stepover:
London Bridge Station, 29th January, 7:30 am - 9:30 am
If you can get to London Bridge (not the easiest place to get to any longer) it may well be worth popping along for a respectful chat with the people who have managed to make our journeys so miserable since the beginning of the year, and who continue to single out our line for special levels of cancellation.

A simplistic solution. Couldn't some of the longer distance trains from Kent and Sussex go into Waterloo using the old Eurostar tracks and platforms through Brixton while this goes on? Freeing up capacity for the metro lines into London Bridge?

Seeing that my working day is currently shortened considerably by the train services, I probably should stop spending time reading this thread and get back to it!