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South Western Railway - Adrian (27th Oct 2018 - 17:07:33) More comments on talkback about the train service. I was delayed on Wednesday morning by almost an hour, claim has gone in. People may be interested to hear why the new franchise is so much worse than south west trains. When SWT took the franchise in 1997 they were given by British Rail a control room in Waterloo station manned by highly experienced railway operators who knew how to run a network and more importantly what to do when things went wrong(Track failure, signal problems, trespassers on the line and all sorts of other things). When South Western Railway took over they shut it down and moved it to Basingstoke, most of the staff then left, this cut costs as you pay less for new staff in Basingstoke, and they used the old control room as extra retail space in the station. However, you lost all the experience from the old staff, which will take years to replace. I fear there is no way to turn back the clock, but hopefully the new company will go bust, there are already rumours that they are not making enough money to pay the franchise fee they bid. The company is unable to run an efficient and on time service on strike days when there are alot less trains how can they hope to run more trains which they have promised. In addition the new refurbished trains are terrible the seats are like a block of concrete no padding at all.

Re: South Western Railway - Keith (28th Oct 2018 - 07:22:26) Adrian I agree with your point re the Control room, but it is unfair to lay all of the problems on Wednesday this week at the door of SWR. SWR faced two problems on Wednesday morning, the strike by RMT which meant that many trains had 'backstop' guards - staff who were not normally guards but had received rudimentary training to enable them to perform the guard function on trains, coupled with a major track circuit failure between Woking and Surbiton. So did the fault lie with SWR, no, the fault lied with RMT and Network Rail. The alternative route from Guildford to London (via Effingham Junction and Leatherhead) has limited additional capacity and so simply could not cope with the increased number of trains needing to use the track - hence why several trains (including the one I was on to London on Wednesday morning) were terminated at Guildford. If RMT were to stop their strike action and Network Rail had a larger injection of cash for new infrastructure, neither problem would have arisen and the trains would have operated as normal. Remember that SWR were planning a major enhancement to train frequencies from the December timetable but as a result of 'cock-ups' elsewhere across the country, by other operators, Network Rail and the Rail Delivery Group, these timetable changes were put on hold by the Department of Transport. I should add I have no connection with SWR other than being a passenger. ps: I would agree with you re the seating on new trains, but the new trains being introduced closer to London at the moment were specified by South West Trains - by the time SWR took over the new trains were already being delivered. SWR new trains are on order but not yet delivered.

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