No Southern Trains from Forest Hill/Honor Oak Park this weekend

Local Services
#1

Network Rail are starting a major upgrade project this weekend to modernise the tracks and signalling on their lines in and out of London Victoria and some of their lines in South London. As a result of this no trains will be running between East Croydon or Streatham Hill and Victoria and an amended timetable of services will operate to and from London Bridge instead.

The bad news for us is that due to the extra services that need to operate to/from London Bridge Southern services will not be stopping at any station between East Croydon and London Bridge which means our usual Southern services to London Bridge/Crystal Palace/ Coulsdon South/Caterham and Tattenham Corner will not be operating at all!

The good news is that London Overground will be operating as normal this weekend.

This project is currently scheduled for the following weekends/bank holidays so the situation regarding our local services is likely to be the same however I will recheck and update accordingly each week.

Saturday 13 - Sunday 14 February
Saturday 20 - Sunday 21 February (London Overground not operating between Shadwell and Highbury and Islington)
Saturday 1 - Monday 3 May (Bank Holiday weekend)
Saturday 8 - Sunday 9 May
Saturday 15 - Sunday 16 May
Saturday 22 - Sunday 23 May
Saturday 29 - Monday 31 May (Bank Holiday weekend)
Sunday 6 June

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No Southern Trains from Forest Hill/Honor Oak Park this weekend
#2

Haven’t they had most weekends for the entire of the past year with services down or greatly reduced to be able to finish whatever needs doing. Cannot quite get my head around it all but I am pretty sure there used to be an excuse that these works could not be done at night due to the Gatwick Express which also has not been running for months.

We no longer have a train service to Victoria but when engineering works are needed on the track to Victoria they close our London Bridge line!! I wonder how Southern are getting on with reinstating that service for their next timetable revision which I think is also in May?

To be fair I’d prefer 8 trains/hour on the overground to 2/4 from Southern because it’s easy enough to change at Canada Water onto the Jubilee line if you want to go to London Bridge anyway.

But if they are planning on closing the overground as well, for those five weekends then that is completely unacceptable. May is likely to be the time when we come out of lockdown and what the same month we will be left with no transport.

National Rail journey planner is saying that the overground is still running on those weekends, but there is a message on there that says “it is not yet known if this journey will be affected by engineering work”

They really must be having a joke even contemplating giving us zero trains for five weekends in succession just as we come out of lockdown. If they needed to shut lines then why wasn’t it done in January and February when we are in lockdown and not able to travel anyway, rather than waiting for the month are likely to come out of lockdown to cancel the services.

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#3

Firstly thank you @ChrisR for this info as always!
The Train service here at weekends has been a bone of contention over the past couple of years-As someone who has to work at weekends it makes life very difficult and is the only thing I dislike about living here.
the lack of service at weekends due to ‘engineering work’ has always been an issue but I would say that in the past 18 months its become much more of a regular occurrence.
We may have been in Lockdowns on and off since March 2020 but plenty of people do not have the option to work from home and have to still get to and from work at weekends or risk losing their jobs.
My journey takes 90 mins each way when we have no trains-This is a joke we live in Zone 3-not in Deepest Kent or Sussex.

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#4

You may be able to change from the Overground at New Cross Gate if you want to get to London Bridge. Some mainline trains are fast from East Croydon to New Cross Gate.

#5

Before posting the original article I did check National Rail’s Journey Planner to see if there were trains from New Cross Gate to London Bridge this weekend but it was only offering a walk from New Cross Gate to New Cross to pick up the South Eastern services into London Bridge!

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#6

Although the Monday-Friday Victoria service has not been reinstated yet the Saturday service was reinstated in the winter timetable that was introduced in December but will obviously not run on the Saturdays when lines into Victoria are closed.

Although National Rail’s website often doesn’t show full details on weekend changes until a few days before the actual weekend TFL’s website lists the tube and London Overground closures and service changes but these do sometimes change. Currently the only changes showing for some May weekends is that they won’t run between Shadwell and Highbury & Islington.

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#7

Thanks for the info, Chris.

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#8

This is almost comedy gold if it wasn’t true!

As above @ChrisR thanks for all your updates.

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