Does anyone know why, yesterday at Victoria -
- Gatwick Express services started being cancelled all afternoon.
- Resulting in a massive stampede with 100s of people and suitcases rammed in to the 1532 Brighton service. Never seen such a crush before!
- Also usual platforms 16-19 not in use, so a complete shambles at Platform 12. No large gate opened.
- Arrived in Brighton at 6pm as engineering works led to Horsham/Littlehampton/Worthing etc detour!
On Sunday afternoon, there was a signalling problem at Redhill resulting in a power outage to the Down direction (South Coast direction) signals. Platform 3, the main Southbound platform, was left out of service for quite some time, as indeed (I believe) were some of the signals for the centre Mainlines. I think the problems began sometime around 1430hrs. As you will note from the Flooding and Weather-Related Disruption thread, the first Gatwick Express services after the disruption were the 1700 VIC>GTW and the 1750 GTW>VIC. All other Southern services were delayed by up to 60 minutes or thereabouts during the disruption.
I cannot say - I do not know - specifically why the power outage occurred, but I should think it could potentially be due to the ongoing water ingress problems with much of the structure of Redhill Station and its various facilities. There was some rain, some of which was classed as "Heavy" by the Met Office and METAR (aviation forecasts), throughout the weekend. There were no major floods, lightning strikes or general power outages in the local area, to my knowledge. This was why I posted information on the aforementioned thread. On the other hand, it is very much a possibility that the disruption was not weather-related.
The major engineering work so commonplace on Sundays resulted in afternoon trains being replaced by buses between Three Bridges and Brighton. The only viable alternative route was via Horsham, which some trains used, including the xx02/xx32 from VIC. Other engineering works between Purley and Gatwick Airport did mean that a high number of services had to use the Redhill Mainlines rather than the Quarry Line avoiding route, and this turned out to be most unhelpful at the time of the signal failure, I should imagine!
I absolutely cannot comment for the information and gateline procedures at VIC during the disruption, as I was not there and their procedures seem to differ almost daily. You do get occasional "stampedes" as hundreds of passengers make their way between altered services, and this is something which I agree poses risks. I suggest you contact Network Rail and Southern about this.
Does that help?
