I had an opportunity in mid-October to watch the Thameslink operation in the morning peak. It was a day when everything was running well; there were no cancellations, punctuality was excellent, with nothing more than a couple of minutes late, and all the trains were full arriving in central London. Dwell times were not exceeded, with efective train despatch. There is currently still some slack in the system; for example, trains from Brighton generally having two minutes’ recovery time approaching Blackfriars, so trains from the south typically had signal checks at the approaches to the station. There is also some slack on the Great Northern route north of St Pancras; the train I caught to Finsbury Park was held in the tunnel before reaching the East Coast main line, but arrived on time.
As a feature in this issue explains (p68), now the Thameslink operation has overcome the agonies of the irst few months (when the route sufered an appalling level of unpredictable cancellations), it appears that the current timetable works, although it remains a very complex network, particularly south of the Thames.
The Southern service has settled well, too, with the philosophy of operating train crew and units on e…
