True stories from the Great Railway Disaster

No 86: so you want to find out about engineering works?

Cath Senker, of Brighton, recently travelled to Southampton, intending to return on the following day, the Sunday of the August Bank Holiday. There was no mention of delays when she bought her ticket but on the return leg, she found that there were no trains from Fareham to Brighton due to engineering works.

She was informed that she would have to catch a special bus service to Brighton, which would take twice as long as the one-hour train journey. Ms Senker asked why she had not been informed of this when buying her ticket at Brighton the previous day. She was told that as Brighton is a Network SouthCentral station, and her train was run by South West Trains, they would not have details of any alterations to services on SWT trains.

She was then told that if she could get to nearby Havant, she could get the Network SouthCentral service to Brighton, which would only take an hour, rather than two hours on the bus. She asks: "So why weren't SWT simply running a bus service to Havant, 15 minutes away by road? Of course, SWT is a competitor company so the bus service was being run in competition with the normal train service offered by NSC."