I got a response from Southern Railway to my email: http://www.se23.com/forum/showthread.php...87#pid4087

It is the case that the performance on this line has not been as good in recent weeks as it was earlier last year. I can appreciate the frustration highlighted by you and others in the Forest Hill area and must apologise for the problems faced by passengers.

The examples you provide from the forum board have been the result of a variety of factors. For example, the short formation of the 0802 from Honor Oak Park to London Bridge on 29 January was a reaction to the events of 28 January which you mention that stemmed from ice on the conductor rail at various locations across the network leading to widespread disruption. Unfortunately, this continued throughout the evening and into the next morning as rolling stock remained out of place in some cases which in this example caused the 0802 departure to be four carriages instead of eight. The example of the cancelled 0853 from Forest Hill on 24 January was caused by a fault on the train (the driver?s surveillance allowing safe opening and closing of the doors for passengers was faulty) which meant it had to be taken out of service first thing in the morning.

These examples and the others noted are not the kind of service that we want to provide to our passengers and we are pleased to say that performance has improved in the last week with reliability (the number of trains running against the number planned) high and the percentage of trains arriving on time currently standing at 95 per cent for the South London area this month to date.

Let me assure you that there is a strong focus on improving the recent trend in performance and reliability both from our perspective and that of Network Rail such that we get back to previous levels of performance ? for example in summer last year when performance was at a record high.

It is also the case that the Forest Hill line to London Bridge is a particularly busy line, even by London standards, and has seen significant increases in patronage in recent years. In 2006, we increased the capacity available into London Bridge in the morning peaks by adding carriages to trains making them the maximum of eight-carriages, providing 14 per cent more capacity. At the same time there was a 20 per cent increase in demand.

In the short-term there isn?t a clear solution to the rapid increase in demand with all rolling stock and paths to London Bridge in use. In the medium term, Network Rail?s South London Route Utilisation Strategy is looking at just this issue ? how to increase capacity on these lines in South London where it is most required. We expect that the results of this strategy will inform the specification for the new franchise which will be tendered over this year and will start in September 2009.

Until then, the emphasis will indeed be on improving the performance of the current service pattern such that trains run on time and they are made up of the expected number of carriages.