Compensation Conundrum

[whole diary]

[Steve Bray]

My commute to work on Friday was rather fraught. I usually travel from Dorking at 0729 on South West Trains to St Margaret's arriving at 0844, changing at Clapham Junction. On Friday I was cutting things fine, and as I pass by Dorking Deepdene to Dorking Main, I decided to catch the 0726 GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) service and travel via Redhill to Clapham Jcn.

Unfortunately on getting to the platform at Deepdene, the 0726 was showing as cancelled. I then walked to Dorking Main station. Here I caught the 0745 Southern service to Victoria. This does call at Clapham Jcn. However it is 5 mins or so quicker to Clapham Jcn if I change at Leatherhead onto a SWT^▸ (South West Trains) service which is what I did. Alas at Ashtead, it was announced that an earlier SWT service had failed at Stoneleigh and was blocking the line. My train stopped there for over 20 minutes before continuing to Epsom where it was terminated.

From Epsom, I then caught the 0838 Southern service to Clapham Jcn; this though had been delayed by the congestion, and arrived into Clapham 25 minutes late at 0938. From CLJ, I continued to St Margaret's by SWT on a slightly delayed service and arrived at 1009.

So the point of this is to ask: can I make more than 1 claim to Train Operating Companies for a single journey? As my first train was cancelled should my claim be with GWR? South West Trains delayed me even more so I believe that would be a valid claim, and finally, as Southern's Delay Repay applies for trains running more than 15 minutes late, could I apply to them as well?

I am almost loathe to claim to GWR as their Compensation system is useless (currently awaiting a cheque from a cancelled service in mid-March).

[ChrisB]

You can only claim once for any delayed journey.

Moot point whether GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) or SWT^▸ (South West Trains) though. If SWT had all run to time, you wouldn't have been 30mins late on your routing. If I'm right, then your claim is with SWT. As they tend to settle quicker, I'd lodge a claim with them - if they refuse it, they will let you know why. But there's no doubt you were over 30mins late. So they ought to also pass your claim to GWR and advise you of this.

[Surrey 455]

Alas at Ashtead, it was announced that an earlier SWT^▸ (South West Trains) service had failed at Stoneleigh and was blocking the line. My train stopped there for over 20 minutes before continuing to Epsom where it was terminated.

I was on that failed train. It  arrived at Stoneleigh on time and then "lost power". After about 30 mins we were told to get off and take a train back to Epsom and then take a Southern to Victoria. Because of all the trains terminating at Epsom we had to wait another 15 mins or so for a platform to become free. Got into work 90 minutes late.