HIGHLY COMMENDED
Southeastern and NR
Southeastern and Network Rail were highly commended by the National Rail Awards judges in the Outstanding Teamworking category, owing to the innovative crossindustry partnership they formed with South Western Railway over the August 2017 Bank Holiday weekend.
During this period there was a four-day closure of Waterloo East, Charing Cross and London Bridge stations to enable rebuilding work on London Bridge, as part of the Thameslink programme.
In order to limit disruption to passengers and avoid overcrowding at Cannon Street station, Southeastern, NR and SWR worked closely together to create a one-off timetable that provided enough seats to get people in and out of central London using an alternative route, despite the closure of three of Southeastern’s busiest stations.
The scale of the task was significant – around 7,000 journeys per day were re-routed to Waterloo, where the station’s former International platforms were specially re-opened (the first time in 100 years that Southeastern services would run through and terminate at Waterloo station).
This part of the project involved the use of driver managers as ‘pilot’ drivers who had been trained for three weeks prior to the work so they could drive through Waterloo, and additional staff to dispatch the Southeastern trains terminating at the station.
It was also necessary to re-energise the Linford Street Curve to enable Southeastern to run its Class 375 trains into Waterloo, and for an extensive communications campaign to be developed in order to engage with passengers about the timetable change. This campaign contributed to a passenger awareness score of 87%, and much positive feedback being received on social media in the days that followed the four-day closure.
Judges were impressed with the extent of planning and liaison with operations in both Southeastern and NR, in addition to the scale of the task, and felt the overall project was a major success.