They look like they have plenty of room inside that tin. Move down!

Excellent. These really should be dotted around the stations with a link to this forum - the more people log onto this the more clout we might have in our complaints. I would say use Honor Oak printers but it's probably due to be closed down within days in the current climate!
Dark days.

Similar to Ping Pong's observation..I've lived here 7 years and often used to be able to get a seat back then, now it's almost impossible from 8am. The service certainly isn't keeping pace with the numbers moving into the area. With every new block of flats built, while it's supposedly regenerating the place and encouraging new businesses (we hope) there's going to be significant pressure on parking and transport.
On Monday of this week it was a bloomin' nightmare. Several trains delayed and cancelled - and me being one of the polite ones, getting left on the platform while others pushed in front of me at the last minute. I just can't bring myself to shove people out of the way like that - it just depresses me.
Luckily I don't have to get the 8.11 every day or I'd have moved out of the area by now.

The poster idea looks good. Do we even need hard copies, could we not roll them out on emails and circulate them around London that way and bombard Southern with them? Photobox might be able to assist with hard copies however not sure about copyright and whether companies could leave themselves open to being sued, etc by Southern.

The ' meet the manager' day in February looks promising, how about we stage something then. Perhaps that could be our' day of action'?

I think we should all dress up as sardines one morning and invite the BBC & ITV news cameras.

I catch the train the other way round to tulse hill in the mornings to go to wimbledon and i got so fed up of the cancellations and delays i decided to drive to tulse hilll and park there. its much easier and quicker, but my office is moving to paddington in june so i will need to go the otherway, with all this discussion and seeing the crowding on the otherside of the platforom, im thinking of getting a bike and riding the distance, i couldnt put up with what all you go through! its nuts!

How have people found it today and yesterday? I found it busy but the trains were on time and the trains were the right length. What are other people's experiences?

No problem. I even got a seat.

No prob today either. I got a seat on the 8.21 this morning at FH, as did a majority of the others at FH. Did anyone read the article in the Metro about plans to add a bunch more carriages because of the 40% rise in train passengers? Good news I'd say.

This morning's 08.59 was four carriages.

If anyone's interested: my email to Southern and their response -

"Could you please tell me what's happened to the morning service (specifically the 8.53 and around that time) from Forest Hill to London Bridge? It's always been pretty reliable, but over the last month or so it's been increasingly erratic, often late or cancelled, leading to extreme overcrowding. I'm sure you've had a million emails about this morning's total debacle, but it's only the worst example of a real and obvious decline in the service over the last month or so.

What's happened?

And what compensation can I claim for consistently late trains when I travel using a zone 1 to 3 monthly oyster card?"

Reply:

"Thank you for your email I can understand the frustration caused by the recent poor performance of your trains from Forest Hill to London Bridge. We always try make announcements about cancellations as early as we can. We do everything we can to run every service and only cancel trains when we have no other options. When a train is cancelled because we can't get a driver or guard for a train, it can sometimes be almost the last minute before we know. We are very sorry for the trouble this causes. I would explain there is a huge variety of reasons why delays can occur. They can be rooted in railway operational problems such as defects on trains, signalling and track problems, staffing difficulties, or they can arise from the very nature of the job we are trying to do. At the heart of all this is the timetable. It has to have a theoretical starting point and we include as many trains as we can, even to the extent that our planners actually work in half-minutes. Like most networks radiating from London, the Southern territory is an intricate web of interconnecting lines and junctions where the timetable has to be designed around crucial dovetailing of services on many different routes. However, there is a difference between theory and practice and that is where things can often go wrong. Most of our trains have to funnel through Gatwick Airport, Clapham Junction, East Croydon or in and out of London Bridge, and the combined frequencies are such that even a small delay at the wrong time can quickly mushroom into a much larger problem. For much of the time, therefore, these delays are often simply the knock-on effect of close scheduling on heavily used routes. That said, we have not thrown in the towel. Directors and senior managers are driving a number of ongoing initiatives aimed at supporting all staff at the operational level in focussing tightly on the relentless and repetitive but essential detail of the operation, day in day out. The regulatory authorities judge train company performance in a number of ways. One of these is punctuality and one of the critical targets in avoiding penalties is to get peak hour trains into their termini no more than four minutes late. Amongst these initiatives, therefore, has been an ongoing campaign which has as its key emphasis the crucial importance of right time departures from origin stations and stations en route. This is backed up by a daily director- level conference each morning which reviews that morning's peak and the previous day's evening peak, with particular emphasis on any incidents and how they were resolved. There is also daily monitoring of known "bad runners" at various points en-route and regular practical assistance to local staff by managers and supervisors who might otherwise be office-based. I would like to assure you we will continue to work to improve train punctuality and reliability and the overall quality of our operation. Our results are published on our Passenger Charter posters, which are always displayed at most stations I hope that from the efforts mentioned above you will soon start to see some tangible improvement in the running of your service. As part of our commitments to you in our Passenger's Charter we have an automatic compensation scheme for our season ticket holders. Basically this means that if we fail to meet the advertised targets for running trains on time, or for keeping cancellations to a minimum, then we give you a discount when you renew your ticket. However, in order to guard against giving un-earned discount, such renewals have to be on a like-for-like basis. Moreover, as part of this process, you will understand that we do not then give additional compensation for any individual delay. To explain a little about how this is calculated, our achievements on running trains on time (referred to as 'punctuality') and keeping cancellations to a minimum ('reliability') are worked out every four weeks. This is then added to the previous twelve periods' figures and the average is calculated. If this average is below the set target, then we discount monthly or longer tickets if they are renewed within the following four weeks. The discount is 5% for each category (punctuality and reliability) and 10% will be given if both are below target."

I started reading it but gave up after a few lines.
Its just more Apologese from the Complainer Handling Industry
Complaining politely and rationally won't make a dent in their armour that they surround themselves with, as they do not give a flying flag about improving service, only coming out with diluted verbage that says nothing at all.

Back to the dreadful talk of more radical action and the sardine suit... perhaps the fancy dress shop could help with this?

What a lovely example of a lot of verbiage to add precisely nothing!! It could have come from a 'Yes, Minister' script.

It also seems that they regard paragraphs a bit like they do carriages...something to be used sparingly with as many words (sardines) crammed in each one as possible. Also, and I can't really be bothered reading it again, the whole thing was about trains being on schedule as opposed to actually being able to get on one...they may as well run them fast after Forest Hill to achieve that for all the good stopping at the later stations does on occasion.

The Lib Dems were handing out Honor Oak Park rail surveys at the station this morning, the results of which they will apparently use to take up rail users' concerns with Southern Trains, Network Rail and Transport for London.

8.31 from HOP was cancelled this morning. (No reason I heard of either.) I half-heartedly waited for the 8.45 presuming it would be rammed but got a seat, as did a few others. I can only presume Forest Hillers etc had given up and gone for the bus!

The 08.56 was cancelled this morning. It just seems to be a turn up and wait approach - the timetable has gone out of the window.

The timetable is outside on the platform, we are trying to get it back in the station building, maybe this will make all the difference

Didn't see that article, but just caught this news:

http://londonist.com/2008/02/bad_news_for_fr.php

Good news: 10% extra rolling stock promised, including 600 extra carriages for London

Bad news: not available until 2014

That's a long time to stand around waiting

No mention of Southern getting any extra

Back to more immediate concerns, here are the soothing words of southern:

Dear Mr PVP,

Thank you for your Webform. I am sorry you are not happy with the service we provided and can understand your frustration. We would ideally like to be able to provide a seat for all our passengers. However, as you have experienced, many services have people standing on them every day. Whilst we are running more services now than ever before and have all available carriages in operation during peak times, the increase in demand over recent years has grown such that it has exceeded these improvements. We regularly monitor the number of people on each train and we do make changes to the service where we can, although we are limited to the amount of stock we currently have. I should explain that there are plans to completely revise the South London timetable. The consultation period has finished and it is now up to the parties concerned to make their final decision. We are hopeful that this timetable will commence in December however I cannot confirm that.

Thank you for contacting us.

Regards

Sally Ellis
Southern Customer Services