Gatwick Express ceases to exist

By the time you read this, Gatwick Express will have operated its very last train, the 01:25 arrival at London Victoria. But not to worry, all trains, staff and operations immediately transfer to Southern, and nothing much will change in the short term.

That is, until December this year, when the scheme to overcome crowding on the Brighton Main Line will be implemented. There'll still be trains running non-stop from London to Gatwick every 15 minutes, and for most of the day they'll still use the same trains.

The different comes during each rush hour, when the current fleet will be substituted for longer, higher capacity trains which will run through to Brighton and various other stops south of Gatwick. These trains will have enough seats for 500 commuters in addition to the 100 or so airline passengers you'll currently find on the average Gatwick Express service.

These extra trains have been sitting idle since South West Trains displaced them during a fleet reshuffle last year. They're being refurbished with new seats and extra luggage racks and double width internal doors, but will still have narrow external doors. They'll lose their distinctive "snug" area in the buffet car.

Image taken from Elsie's Flickr stream under Creative Commons

Gatwick Express extended to Brighton

The Gatwick Express has been a thorny issue for a while. They take up an enormous amount of track capacity on one of London's busiest commuter routes, yet even at peak times are at best half-full. Meanwhile, pressure from BAA and the airlines make scrapping them politically impossible.

The DfT today announced a plan that does a shockingly good job of pleasing everyone. The Gatwick Express service itself will be essentially unchanged, but 6 trains each rush hour will double as commuter services to Brighton. To pull this off, the separate franchise will be scrapped and operations transferred to Southern. The enhanced service will need extra trains, so Southern will be getting some of the Class 442 units that were controversially withdrawn by South West Trains last year.

Also announced is the repatriation of 12 trains from Southern back to the Thameslink route they were built for, which should increase capacity there. Southern will in turn get a new fleet of Electrostars.

The DfT's full briefing is here, and the Brighton Main Line Route Utilisation Strategy that prompted this is here.