Following a serious landslip between Edenbridge and Godstone on the 22nd of December 2019, the line between Redhill and Tonbridge has been closed for repairs. During the week, a skeleton shuttle train service has run between Edenbridge and Tonbridge, with buses replacing trains between Redhill and Edenbridge during the week and over the entire line at weekends. However, after months of pain for passengers on the line, the end is finally in sight as Network Rail have confirmed that the line will reopen in full on the 16th of March 2020.
We’ve previously reported on our suspicious that this would be the case, but this is fantastic news for all who use this line for school, work and leisure that the line will be officially reopening on this date.
The line was originally forecast to reopen at the end of March, but Network Rail and their contractors have been able to make good progress and reopen the line 2 weeks earlier than expected. It wasn’t an easy job for them, as a nearly 400m long stretch of high embankment needed to be rebuilt or shored up in an area that was difficult to access. Giving credit where it is due, a fantastic job has been done here and these efforts should not go unrecognised!
During the closure, we’ve been fighting hard to secure reasonable improvements for passengers – such as improvements to peak time frequencies and weekend services during the A21 closure. We still think more could have been done (such as providing a second shuttle unit so that a normal, reliable, peak frequency could run on the shuttle), however we’re glad that we were able to help secure some improvements for passengers and make what was a painful situation even just a little bit better.
With many other landslips occurring across the South East over the last few months, we hope that these repairs will hold firm. For users of the line, this is a will be a welcome return to normality after a turbulent few months.
Ticket holders are able to claim Delay Repay against the original timetable for the delays encountered during this time – with many passengers being delayed by more than the 15 minute threshold. We have received some reports from our members that Southern’s online delay repay system has been automatically rejecting some claims, as the sheer volume of them has tripped methods used to try and prevent fraudulent claims. We’ve been raising this issue with Southern and would encourage any other members (join here!) who have experienced the same issue to contact us so we can raise it directly with them. The ‘workaround’ for the moment appears to be to submit claims by post or by email to customerservices@gtrailway.com, explaining that the online claim system is declining the claim. We think this is a sub-par solution however, increasing costs unnecessarily for both the claimant and Southern, and would prefer instead that their automated claim systems were updated to take account of prolonged instances of disruption such as this!