TRAIN INFORMATION AND COMPLAINTS (Updated January 2011 )

We offer this information in a spirit of helpfulness. It may change and we cannot guarantee its accuracy at any point in time.

National Rail

National Rail Enquiries: 08457 48 49 50

The National Rail website - www.nationalrail.co.uk - provides a wealth of information, including train times up to 12 weeks in advance and live departure boards showing current cancellations and delays.

Train operating companies

Contact individual train operating companies for questions and complaints about trains, timetables, fares etc.

Southern
Southern Customer Services
PO BOX 3021
Bristol
BS2 2BS

Tel: 08451 272920
Fax: 08451 272930
E'mail: comments@southernrailway.com
Website: www.southernrailway.com

South West Trains
Friars Bridge Court
41-45 Blackfriars Road
London
SE1 8NZ

Tel: 08700 005151
Fax 020 7620 5177

Customer Service Centre
South West Trains
Overline House
Blechynden Terrace
Southampton
SO15 1GW

Customer Services Tel: 0845 6000 650
Fax: 023 8072 8187
E’mail: customerrelations@swtrains.co.uk
Website: www.southwesttrains.co.uk

CrossCountry
5th Floor, Cannon House
18 Priory Queensway
Birmingham
B4 6BS

Tel: 08447 369 123
Fax: 0121 200 6005
Website: www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk
E'mail: customer.relations@crosscountrytrains.co.uk

First Great Western
Milford House
1 Milford Street
Swindon
SN1 1HL

Tel: 01793 499400
Fax: 01793 499460
E’mail: fgwfeedback@firstgroup.com
Website: www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk

Passengerfocus

Make complaints to the relevant train operating company in the first instance. If you are not satisfied with the response, contact Passengerfocus:

Passengerfocus
Freepost (RRRE-ETTC-LEET)
PO BOX 4257
Manchester
M60 3AR

Helpline: 0300 123 2350 (opens 08.00; closes 20.00 Mondays-Fridays and 16.00 at weekends)
Fax: 0845 850 1392
E'mail: info@passengerfocus.org.uk
Website: www.passengerfocus.org.uk

Network Rail

If you wish to raise matters about the railway infrastructure, including track, signalling and the major London terminal stations like Waterloo, contact Network Rail. Note that most other stations are managed by the individual train operating companies.

Network Rail
Kings Place
90 York Way
London
N1 9AG

Tel: 020 7557 8000
National Helpline: 08457 11 41 41
Fax: 020 7557 9000
Website: www.networkrail.co.uk

Waterloo station
CP2-4-G
General Offices
Waterloo station
London
SE1 8SW

The House of Commons' Transport Committee

Conducts inquiries, which include public consultation, and produces reports. Details of their current activities can be found on the internet at:
www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/transport_committee.cfm

Transport Committee
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London
SW1P 3JA

Tel: 020 7219 6263 or 020 7219 3266
Fax: 020 7219 0909
E'mail: transcom@parliament.uk

The Department for Transport

Great Minster House
76 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DR

Tel: 020 7944 8300
E'mail: rail@dft.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.dft.gsi.gov.uk

The Office of Rail Regulation

If you have concerns about a rail safety issue, contact the Office of Rail Regulation:

Office of Rail Regulation
One Kemble Street
London
WC2B 4AN

Tel: 020 7282 2000
Fax: 020 7282 2040
E'mail: contact.cct@orr.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.rail-reg.gov.uk

Report serious incidents to ORR Railway Inspectorate:
Tel: 020 7282 3910
Fax: 020 7282 2118
(These numbers apply on Mondays-Fridays from 09.00 to 17.30. There is also a duty officer on 020 7944 5445)

Members of Parliament

Major issues may be of interest to your Member of Parliament. If you do not know the address of the constituency office, you can write to your MP at the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA.

Be public spirited - Share your knowledge with other rail users!

Radio Solent

If you know of current train delays, ring Radio Solent on 023 8063 1311

Newspapers

Newspapers often take an interest in rail issues; in addition you can advise papers when published articles appear to be based on misleading press releases from the rail industry. A few contact details are below:

Southern Daily Echo
Newspaper House
Test Lane
Redbridge
Southampton
SO16 9JX

E’mail: letters@dailyecho.co.uk
(The Echo requires your name and address if you send a letter)

Letters
Portsmouth News
The News Centre
Hilsea
PO2 9SX

E'mail: letters@thenews.co.uk

Letters:
The Editor
Evening Standard
PO Box 2309
London
W8 5EE

E'mail: letters@standard.co.uk
(The Standard requires your daytime telephone number as well as your name and address)

The Editor
The Guardian
Kings Place
90 York Road
London
N1 9GU

E’mail: letters@guardian.co.uk
(The Guardian requires your name, address, daytime telephone number, and reference to the published article on which you are commenting)

The Editor
The Daily Telegraph
1 Canada Square
London
E14 5DT

E’mail: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk

The Editor
The Times
1 Pennington Street
London
E98 1TA

E’mail: letters@thetimes.co.uk

The Advertising Standards Authority

The ASA is the statutory body responsible for protecting consumers against misleading advertisements. See their website for the Group's successful complaint against South West Trains' attempt to misrepresent the scale of its commitments. Their address is:

The Advertising Standards Authority Ltd
Mid City Place
71 High Holborn
London
WC1V 6QT

Tel: 020 7492 2222
E'mail: enquiries@asa.org.uk
Website: www.asa.org.uk

The Campaign for Better Transport

The Campaign for Better Transport is the leading transport Non-Government Organisation. Its compelling arguments and ideas have won the support of national decision makers and local activists, enabling them to to secure transport policies and programmes to improve people's lives and reduce environmental impact.

The Campaign for Better Transport
16 Waterside
44-48 Wharf Road
London
N1 7UX

Tel: 020 7566 6480
Fax: 020 7566 6493
E'mail: info@bettertransport.org.uk
Website: bettertransport.org.uk

More Information about Stagecoach and SWT

“Stagecoach” by Christian Wolmar. Paperback version at £9.99 (ISBN 0-75283-088-0) published by Orion Business Books, Orion House, Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA)

The author refers to a “fundamental defensiveness about Stagecoach’s attitude to the press, borne of an arrogance and deep conviction that the company is right and everyone else is wrong”. Stagecoach’s business practices were described by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission as "predatory, deplorable and against the public interest". The High Court decided that it was not in the public interest to block the 1996 World in Action programme “Cowboy Country” about Stagecoach. Steven Norris, the junior transport minister at the time SWT was franchised to Stagecoach, later stated, "Awarding the franchise to Stagecoach was really taking the fight to the enemy… It was the most aggressive decision we could take, and if we had tried to dress privatisation in its most acceptable form, it would have been better to award it to almost anyone else".

Memoranda from the South Hampshire Rail Users’ Group. The first Memorandum is in Volume II of the former House of Commons Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee’s report “Passenger Rail Franchising and the Future of Railway Infrastructure” published in March 2002. The Memorandum outlines commuters’ concerns that the re-franchising process is not transparent and that the choice of Stagecoach was a breach of good faith given government statements that the interests of passengers should be paramount. The Memorandum can be found on our website in Hogrider No.91. The second Memorandum brought the history of Stagecoach's shortcomings up to date and is in the Transport Committee's report "Passenger Rail Franchising" published in November 2006. The Memorandum can be found on our website in Hogrider No.110.

South Hampshire Rail Users' Group's submission of February 2004 to the Government's "Big Conversation". The submission voiced concern at Stagecoach's continuing tenure of the South West Trains franchise, given their extremely poor record, and questioned whether the Strategic Rail Authority had, through its huge handouts to the company at taxpayers' expense, become the "Stagecoach Rescue Authority". The submission is on our website.

South Hampshire Rail Users' Group's submission in response to the Department for Transport's formal consultation on franchising. This includes an appendix providing a potted history of South West Trains, through many voices.

South Hampshire Rail Users' Group Mission Statement

The Group was founded over 15 years ago by a group of London commuters. It is open to everyone, without formal membership, and now operates principally as a news gathering and campaigning e’mail network. Our vision is the ongoing improvement of rail services on the Hampshire network, within a context in which the interests of rail users are paramount and all passengers are treated with openness, courtesy and respect.

We have links to the Hampshire County Council and Campaign for Better Transport websites, are on the official list of rail user groups, and have enjoyed many positive exchanges of correspondence with MPs, local government officials, and others. During the competition for the latest SWT franchise, all the bidders except Stagecoach contacted us; we were represented at a number of stakeholder events, and National Express mounted an event specifically for our Group. A number of train operating companies continue to maintain friendly contacts with us.

We strongly supported a change of operator on SWT, but the Government decided otherwise, after Stagecoach had published a hugely deceptive prospectus called ‘Building on Success’. An on-line poll conducted by SWT, following the re-franchising process, established that barely one third of respondents thought Stagecoach should have kept the franchise. This was concealed from passengers by the publication of a false figure of 61 per cent.

That was before lower-quality rolling stock was imposed on Weymouth and Portsmouth line commuters, travel centres were destroyed, ticket office opening hours became even less compliant and were reduced, permit to travel machines were ripped out, revenue protection was stepped up with the arrogant proclamation that genuine error would be punished, and SWT’s Passengers Panel was steadily reduced to monologues by Stagecoach director Sir Alan Greengross in the operator’s e-motion magazine (which has since ceased publication).

As above, memoranda by our Group were published in both of the House of Commons Transport Committee’s reports on passenger rail franchising. Our contribution to the Government’s Big Conversation pointed out that the SRA was handing huge sums of money to Stagecoach yet passengers were often treated abominably. The National Audit Office has since congratulated the Government on getting better value for money from franchises after abolishing the SRA.

In October 2010, we submitted a substantial response to the Department for Transport's formal consultation on franchising. DfT confirmed it would go to the Minister, and that the appendix on SWT would also go to the DfT's SWT franchise team.

We have had many letters and articles published in newspapers and magazines. A letter published in RAIL described why the new SWT timetable between Southampton and Weymouth is not fit-for-purpose and does not reflect the Service Level Commitment. It also highlighted how the since-sacked rail minister Tom Harris was presenting chaos as order. This followed a meeting at which Department of Transport officials had stated that changes to the timetable would probably be up for discussion, but at which they simply tried to argue that the current service is compliant with the SLC, when it clearly isn’t, and that some of the most disadvantageous changes had been subject to proper consultation when they clearly hadn’t been.

An example of why the new timetable is so absurd is the removal of stops by semi-fast trains at Totton, the fourth largest intermediate town between Southampton and Weymouth, which we had successfully campaigned to have reinstated in the latter days of BR. These trains do however manage to stop instead at places like the remote industrial halt of Holton Heath and tiny hamlet of Moreton. DfT was careful to withhold such timetable details in its consultative exercise.

Clearly some passengers continue to face an uphill struggle in a hostile and stressful environment and it scarcely seems surprising that such small percentages (around 20% of peak passengers) consider they get value for money from operators like SWT. The overall satisfaction of SWT's vast numbers of commuters is inevitably distorted by the fact that National Passenger Surveys ask only about the respondent's most recent journey. Nevertheless, the NRS statistics show that 20,000,000 passengers a year are dissatisfied with a journey on SWT.

We will strive to represent the interests of passengers generally. It is clear from contacts we receive that our efforts are appreciated across the South West Trains area generally rather than just in Southern Hampshire. Apart from Stagecoach itself, and the occasional anonymous blogger, virtually all these contacts have been positive.

The South Hampshire Rail Users' Group welcomes news suitable for circulation. Our newsletters are produced in good faith from observations and research by members of the Group and information received from other sources. They are a way of disseminating information to individuals and organisations in public life. We strive for accuracy at all times, and where any information is considered unclear or unlikely to be correct it is not used.