TRAIN CRAZY!
Chaotic rail firm DOES have a service that always runs and has lots of room... but you can’t get on!
FOR thousands of furious Southern rail passengers facing the misery of unending cancellations and strikes, it will no doubt be another source of anger and frustration.
The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the beleaguered operator has at least managed to run one train like clockwork – the only snag is that passengers cannot get on it.
Every weekday, a gleaming train leaves Newhaven Marine station in East Sussex.
It makes the journey past passengers waiting for services at seven busy stations – Newhaven Harbour, Newhaven Town, Southease, Lewes, Falmer, Moulsecoomb and London Road Brighton – without picking up a single passenger. Some 45 minutes later it arrives at Brighton.
Worse still, passengers on some rail forums have claimed that while fares for the 20-mile journey were advertised, they were not able to buy tickets.
The train is known as a ‘parliamentary train’ or ‘ghost train’, one of a handful across the country run by train operators to fulfil franchise obligations. Infuriatingly, Newhaven Marine station, which is overgrown with weeds and littered with discarded rubbish, is just a few hundred yards from the well-used Newhaven Harbour station.
Newhaven Marine was closed to passengers in 2006 following safety concerns after a roof was damaged, but it remains part of the network and is sometimes used as a ‘temporary sidings’ for empty trains.
The ‘ghost train’ allows Southern to fulfil an obligation to have a service running from the station. To close the station officially would require the company to enter into a long and expensive consultation.
Last night, politicians expressed outrage at the revelation on behalf of the 120,000 commuters who use Southern services during peak hours. Maria Caulfield, Tory MP for Lewes, said: ‘It’s outrageous that they’re running a daily service through the most beleaguered main line on the Southern network and no one can get on.’
Southern has been plagued with problems this year, with Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union conductors staging a series of strikes in recent months over con- cerns that driver-only operated trains will put jobs at risk and jeopardise public safety. Southern has blamed late trains on ‘unexpectedly high levels of train crew sickness’ – an assertion unions reject as ‘lies’. They say the fault lies with the firm’s ‘failure to recruit enough workers to fill new rosters’.
Southern, which is consistently ranked by the National Passenger Railway Survey as one of the worst rail operators in the country, suspended the Newhaven Marine to Brighton service – which runs at 8.15pm every weekday – earlier this month as part of its emergency timetable, during which a total of 341 services were axed. But it will be reintroduced once the full timetable is resumed.
Last night, RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: ‘Passengers will be outraged that they clearly have the resources to run ghost trains while the public are left stranded in appalling conditions.’
A spokesman for Southern said: ‘The alternative to running this train would be to undertake a lengthy process to officially close Newhaven Marine station, and, as the train movement is an essential part of delivering two real passenger services, this would not be in our passengers’ interests.’