Great Western Coffee Shop

Evening all,

As part of the Southampton Freight Train Lengthening Scheme (FTLS) there are a few closures coming up for engineering works around Southampton Central. The focus of this work, among other things, is to allow commissioning of new signalling as part of the scheme.

Line closures and the dates thereof will be:

30/01/2021: Southampton Airport Parkway-Brockenhurst & Romsey-Redbridge
31/01/2021: Eastleigh-Brockenhurst (via. Southampton Central), Romsey-Redbridge & St. Denys-Woolston
- GWR Portsmouth Hbr - Cardiff Central trains will divert between Fareham & Romsey, via. Botley (non-stop), to call at Eastleigh and Chandlers Ford.
- XC trains will be replaced by buses between Southampton Airport Parkway and Bournemouth on 30th and between Eastleigh and Bournemouth on Sunday 31st.
- South West Railway services will operate between London Waterloo and Eastleigh and between Brockenhurst and Weymouth.
On both days there will be replacement buses between Eastleigh and Southampton as well as between Romsey and Southampton.
- South West Railway local services between Portsmouth & Southsea and Southampton Central will operate between Portsmouth & Southsea and St. Denys on 30th January but will be replaced by buses on 31st January.

13/02/2021-14/02/2021: Eastleigh-Brockenhurst (via. Southampton Central), Romsey-Redbridge & St. Denys-Woolston
- GWR Portsmouth Hbr - Cardiff Central trains will divert between Fareham & Romsey, via. Botley (non-stop), to call at Eastleigh and Chandlers Ford.
- South West Railway services will operate between London Waterloo and Eastleigh and between Brockenhurst and Weymouth.
- XC services will be replaced by buses between Eastleigh and Bournemouth.
- On both days there will be replacement buses between Eastleigh and Southampton as well as between Romsey and Southampton.
- South West Railway local services between Portsmouth & Southsea and Southampton Central will operate between Portsmouth & Southsea and Woolston on both days with trains using Platform 1 only at Woolston.

15/02/2021-19/02/2021: Southampton Central-Romsey & Southampton Central - Brockenhurst
It appears that, as things stand, there are no replacement buses planned. However there are local bus services between Southampton and Eastleigh at a frequency of 2bph.

More info on the scheme, for anyone interested, can be found at https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes/wessex/southampton-freight-train-lengthening-scheme/ but I think that the St. Denys-Woolston closure will be for works not related to the FTLS.

HTIOI,
Dave

Thanks for that, Dave.    It would appear that the GWR trains are diverted with extra calls at Chandlers Ford and Eastleigh replacing the call at Southampton Central.  Rail connections at Eastleigh into Waterloo to Poole and Weymouth trains for Southampton Central, where they terminate for the week.  Unclear whether extra calls will be made at Eastleigh on those services from London that normally whistle straight through - I would hope so, bearing in mind that the Romsey Rocket which usually provides half this service is cut back to a Salisbury - Romsey shuttle.

GWR running via Eastleigh and Chandlers Ford is a fairly routine diversion, it happens a few times most years for normal preventive maintenance in the Southampton area anyway. 

There isn?t capacity to run many XC or SWR trains from Eastleigh as far as Southampton Parkway, because the route into the Parkway up platform from Eastleigh isn?t a properly signalled move, so it is done with pilotman working, (ie a ?human token?), only one train at a time.

I expect the apparent wider impact, eg to Woolston, is because that?s the last suitable crossover, and/or whole panels at Eastleigh ASC will have to be out of action for modification and that affects a significant track area.  Most of the physical track and signalling changes are in the Millbrook area, I think the bulk of the hardware changes eg new gantries and signals are already in place but out of use.

Paul