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Commuter column - The weakest link - by Laurie Price
Train in the snow at Burgess Hill
Even ahead of the snowfall that hit Sussex, services to and from the Mid Sussex region were subject to delay, disruption and cancellation due to a fire in the bogies of a Gatwick Express train at Victoria station on Thursday.
The station was closed for an hour at the height of the commuter arrival peak.
Whilst occasional delay and disruption might be expected to a mass transit system, there does seem to have been an increase in the number of recent incidents that have disrupted rail services causing real difficulty for local commuters.The Gatwick Express unit that was affected by the fire was one of the 40-year-old refurbished units brought out of retirement to increase capacity, whilst the more modern specialist Gatwick Express units are confined to sidings for large parts of the day.Not only does the age of such rolling stock make breakdown more likely, but its overall configuration with doors only at the ends of carriages, is far from ideal for use by commuters and facilitating fast loading and unloading during station stops. That is without continuing to question the advisability of mixing commuters with airline passengers and their inevitable baggage.
The use of the old rolling stock on the Gatwick Express and its extension on peak services to Brighton, although providing a “quick fix” to peak capacity, does represent the “weakest link” in the system.
So yet again it seems it is commuters who face disruption, this time due to the age of the train, as financial expediency takes precedence.
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Weather for Haywards Heath
Tuesday 21 May 2013
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 9 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 5 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North west
