More rail delays for commuters

Some morning commuters reported being held up for two hours due to the disruption, which came less than a week after three days of speed restrictions through Balcombe Tunnel due to what Network Rail described as “track defects”.

We asked Network Rail to explain the technical nature of the works and the problems at Hassocks and Balcombe but the rail maintenance company has not provided it.

Shelley Atlas, who chairs the pressure group Brighton Line Commuters said: “They should explain the technical details. It’s stupid. They are responsible for track maintenance and they owe it to people who pay a lot of money to travel on the trains.”

Network Rail’s press office emailed a statement to us which provided some explanation for the delays, although not the technical information we had asked for.

The statement said: “Overrunning engineering works in the Hassocks area, caused by a failed piece of machinery, resulted in delays to passengers on Wednesday morning.

“We replaced the equipment and completed the work as quickly as possible afterwards. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

“Regarding the Balcombe Tunnel issues last week, in the early hours of Tuesday morning (12 November) a track defect was reported in Balcombe Tunnel and a line speed of 20mph was enforced until engineers could gain access to railway overnight when trains weren’t running.

“Engineers worked throughout the night to fix the track problem and discovered other work which needed to be carried out. Therefore a line speed of 20mph was enforced again on Wednesday and Thursday while engineers worked to fix the problem overnight.”

Shelley Atlas said: “If emergency work needs to be done, we can understand the delays but if the work is planned maintenance overnight we don’t expect it to overrun into the day-time timetable.”

We ran a story on the track problems in Balcombe tunnel in this week’s Middy, out today (Thursday, November 21). If you know what the “track problems” were or the nature of rail maintenance works in Hassocks, let us know by emailing:

dianne.jones

*There will be extensive work taking place on the Brighton main line over Christmas which will affect passengers’ journeys. All the information is here: network rail