IT WAS late every day for a year – but now train bosses have moved the goalposts of the infamous 7.29am Brighton to London Victoria service in a bid to improve their performance statistics.

The Argus exclusively revealed earlier this year how Brighton’s most popular commuter train failed to make it to the capital on time for each of its 240 journeys in 2014. Commuters then dubbed it ‘the worst train service in Britain’.

Southern Rail has now made efforts to ensure such accolades are a thing of the past by scheduling the service to arrive at Victoria three minutes later. It also aims to make up time by scrapping Wivelsfield from its list of stops.

The changes have been introduced as part of the firm’s new summer timetable, starting on Sunday.

Among other amendments are changes to the 6.56am Brighton to London Victoria train, which will no longer run from Brighton at all. Instead it will start at Gatwick Airport at 7.34am.

Southern says passengers who normally catch the 6.56 from Brighton can take alternative services including the 6.46 or 7.12 to London Victoria.

But Brighton passengers, who pay up to £5,000 a year for a season ticket to London, have been critical of the new summer changes.

Gareth Paulson, 40, from Brighton, said: “With regards to the 7.29 I can understand why they’ve removed Wivelsfield as very few people get on there. But if they really want to make it run on time they may need to move it back even further.

“It is fine for them to massage their ‘on time’ figures like this, but fundamentally we have been suffering greater than inflation ticket price rises for years, and now even the notional timetable journey time is getting longer.

“The 7.29 was only 23 minutes late this morning.”

Ronald Donnelly, from Brighton, added: “The withdrawal of the 6.56 service is crazy. It will cause overcrowding. By the time that train gets to Victoria there must be close to 500 people on it. These people have to be absorbed.

“Advisory alternatives are suggested but one in particular, a Thameslink service to Blackfriars, is extremely overcrowded – so much so that by the time it gets to Burgess Hill it is already standing only.

“My suspicion is that Southern are aiming to improve their punctuality metric by reducing congestion on the Brighton Main Line and don't care about overcrowding, for which they are not penalised for.

“Travel on this line is awful and getting worse. Small and major delays are now routine.”

Southern Rail said it hoped the timetable changes would help sort out many of the punctuality problems.

A Southern spokesman told The Argus: “These changes have been designed to improve performance across the Southern network, and particularly on the Brighton main line which is one of the busiest routes in the country.

“A small delay on this line can have serious knock-on effects leading to widespread delays, so re-timing some trains to leave earlier and altering some calling patterns will distribute trains on the line more evenly and allow more room to manoeuvre to keep trains running on time.

“These new changes are designed to build on those we have already made which are working well, and we expect them to help to improve punctuality further.”

Disgruntled commuters and demoralised staff

The next service arriving at your station could be packed with disgruntled passengers and the staff are fed up too.

Britain’s railways are already under immense pressure. From ever-increasing fares and sardine-tin carriages to notoriously late trains and de-railing locomotives, the last thing the network needs is a demoralised workforce striking en-masse.

Thousands of Network Rail workers could take to the picket lines in their dispute over pay.

Drivers on Southern Rail and Gatwick Express services could also be joining them if a ballot from rail union ASLEF, the results of which are set to be announced on Friday, delivers a similar response.

The RMT said its Network Rail members backed walkouts by 4 to 1 on a turnout of 60%. This gives the new Government its first major challenge on the industrial relations front.

Meanwhile, the new business secretary Sajid Javid said the Government is to press ahead with introducing new laws to stop certain strikes going ahead unless they have the support of 40% of workers eligible to vote.

In addition, at least 50% of those entitled to vote will have to have voted for a strike to go ahead. But any new legislation could arrive too late if the unions strike while the iron is hot.

Responding to the RMT ballot results, Mark Carne, Network Rail chief executive, said: “The railways are a vital public service and industrial action would have a massive impact on millions of passengers as well as freight distribution across Britain. It cannot be right that the unions can hold the country to ransom in this way.

“Our employees have received pay rises eight times higher than other public sector workers over the last four years and have now been offered a deal for the next four years that is unmatched elsewhere.

“Despite the very clear need to modernise our railways, we have offered a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies for the next two years. The unions have also rejected a number of proposals that would boost productivity, removing our ability to offer them more.

“We will do everything we can to keep our railways moving during these times of uncertainty and to stop the RMT from behaving in a way that will cause untold misery to our passengers and will hurt the economy. Fewer than half of RMT members at Network Rail have voted in favour of strike action and we urge union leaders to come back to the table for further discussions.”

Closer to home, Southern Rail has made changes to the timing of around 50 of its morning and 35 of its evening services by generally bringing them forward by a few minutes, so they leave earlier.

The train operator says that by creating extra time in the schedule, a late-running service is less likely to have a knock-on effect across the network.

But commuters are questioning Southern Rail’s new summer timetable and believe Brighton will “lose a whole train” as a result of the changes.

Commuter Gareth Paulson, 40, from Brighton, said: “They are removing one train which I can maybe understand as there are five trains between 6pm and 7pm at the moment.

“But now what they have done is sneakily moved the 18.26, which stopped at Clapham Junction and Croydon, to 18.30. And they say it will be 10 coaches, whereas before it was variably four, eight or 12.

“The 18.32 Gatwick Express to Brighton of 10 coaches has now become the 18.26 train of five coaches just to Gatwick. So essentially Brighton loses a whole train.”

But Shelley Atlas, of Brighton Line Commuters, disagreed with the notion that Southern’s new summer timetable was created with performance statistics in mind.

She said: “I know they’ve been keen to adjust the timetable as little as possible but just enough to find improvements.

“People will say Southern has amended the timetable to improve their performance statistics but they have to look at what’s best for passengers, so I wouldn’t say they do it just for that reason. What they’re doing is trying to create paths through to London.

“It’s debatable about how the changes will really affect people – obviously some will be disappointed naturally but others could benefit.”