Lines have reopened: disruption through Three Bridges expected until 16:00 

Route(s) affected

Gatwick Express between London Victoria and Brighton

Southern between London Victoria and Littlehampton / Bognor Regis / Portsmouth Harbour / Eastbourne / Ore

Thameslink between Peterborough and Horsham, between Cambridge and Brighton and also between Bedford and Three Bridges

Description

Lines have reopened following a fault with the signalling system at Three Bridges. Whilst service recovers, trains may still be be cancelled, delayed by up to 30 minutes or revised.

Disruption is expected until 16:00.

Customer advice:

An earlier signalling problem has been delaying some Southern and Thameslink services via Three Bridges.

Gatwick Express services may also be affected by congestion in the Gatwick Airport area.

Services are now returning to normal, but some delays of around 10-20 minutes remain possible. Some services may be subject to short notice revisions, and so will have cancelled stops or will terminate and restart at a different station to normal.

You can travel using your normal route, but please check before you travel and consider allowing some extra time for your journey. You may also need to change trains or use another route to get to your destination.

Alternative journey options:

Your ticket will be accepted at no extra cost on:

• Metrobus services on any reasonable route between Redhill, Gatwick Airport, Three Bridges / Crawley and Horsham

• Alternative Southern and Thameslink services on any reasonable route, including Southern services between Horsham and London Victoria via Dorking

• South Western Railway services between London Waterloo, Havant and Portsmouth Harbour

Planning your journey:

Live departure boards can be found here.

You can view a live map of the network here.

You can also see an alternative route guide here.

Can you tell me more about the incident?

A signalling fault known as "route locking" is causing disruption to your journey in this area. At the moment, we're working with local staff and our colleagues at Network Rail to assess the situation.

This part of the network uses track circuits to detect the position of trains. These are electrical systems which monitor whether a train is on a section of track. Track circuits operate as part of the signalling system, which is designed to be "fail safe".

When a track circuit fails, the signalling system will interpret this as a train remaining in place, even though there may not be a train present at all, or the previous service may have long since left the area.

In the case of track circuits at junctions, this means the points cannot be moved, as there could still be a train present. As a result, the junction will become route locked. The junction will then only be able to be used for trains running on the route which was selected when the system failed.

The fault has now been fixed, but until the track circuit cleared, it wasn't possible for some trains to pass the area as usual. Some trains could not reach their normal destinations, and congestion also occurred.

Check before you travel:

You can check your journey using the National Rail Enquiries real-time Journey Planner.

Compensation:

You may be entitled to compensation if you experience a delay in completing your journey today. Please keep your train ticket and make a note of your journey, as both will be required to support any claim.