From Monday 5 September, South Western Railway will be introducing a temporary reduced timetable on the West of England line between Exeter St Davids and London Waterloo.
The extremely hot and dry weather experienced recently has caused the clay embankments on the single-track section between Gillingham and Tisbury to dry out and shrink. This has in turn led to some track defects appearing which means trains cannot run at full line speed. The Class 159 units are traveling at 40mph rather than the usual 90mph. This means they take more than twice as long to cover this section - 35 minutes rather than 11.
The company says this revised timetable will enable it to operate a resilient service for customers after Emergency Speed Restrictions have been put in place by Network Rail engineers.
Services will generally run hourly between Waterloo & Yeovil Junction and every two hours between Waterloo & Exeter St David’s. Journey times will increase by an hour between London and Exeter now taking around 4 hours and 25 minutes.
SWR says it is likely that the timetable will remain in operation until at least October, as engineers must wait for the soil to stop shrinking and regain some of its moisture before repairs can be made and the speed restriction lifted.
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