Southern Railway Arundel to London Victoria - engineering work

If you look closer in Advance Fares on a Sunday start at £10.

East and West Croydon are on totally separate lines so work on one line doesn't affect the other.

The 'planned changes' above shows that timetable release will be on or around 2 April- just after Easter. You really have to sit tight until then.

From Arundel trains can run via Crawley (the normal route) or via Dorking, so the chances of no trains is fairly small. If the line was blocked between Arundel and Horsham rail replacement buses will be provided. My own instinct would be to use such buses to drop down to the West Coastway line at Ford, Barnham or Chichester then take an express train along the coast from there-as opposed to up to Horsham. But if I saw the timetables and saw that Horsham was a reasonable journey length I might do that. Just sometimes rail replacement buses can be a bonus in letting you see places you would not otherwise see.

This is a classic case- no normal scheduled bus runs through the villages and towns from Arundel to Horsham, so it will be a nice ride. Then I would likely break my journey in Horsham- which is a very interesting town to explore- but hey, that is just quirky old me. Horsham is fairly unknown on the forum, but in a former life I always liked Horsham as a railhead to the surrounding area. I wouldn't be averse to staying there before a flight from Gatwick. It would have been better than Horley where I lived when working on one of the terminal extension projects at Gatwick.

There is no National Express bus to and from Arundel, and the National Bus Timetable database doesn't show any citybus route serving the town on a Sunday, so bus does not seem to be an option.

Rome2Rio gives generic information, not date specific information, so is no use in this case. Maybe it is showing the local 24/7 citybus Horsham to Gatwick, but should also show the trains. But, well, that is Rome2Rio for you.

Thank you for the helpful insights and evaluation of options.

Glad I didn't search long for a bus route.

Given there are no bus alternatives, if I buy a train ticket now and schedules change, will I simply have a new time for my ticket? I'm not terribly concerned about a change in time an hour or two earlier or later. Unless I opt for a nice Sunday lunch in Arundel, which looks inviting.

The £7 and £10 fares (of which a recent Southern Railway purchase leads me to believe there are very few) on May 26 appear to have been bought up while I was distracted by the puzzles of dealing with my UK pensions on my US taxes.

I did look at routing through Godalming, where I worked while accruing said pension, but those journeys also say they may be affected by the engineering works, so apart from a diversion down memory lane, and adding a more complicated routing, I won't have avoided the problem.

Tickets are now £23.90 for 26 May, and that appears to be their holding price. So your suggestion to hold tight wouldn't seem to cost me anything.

The current fare of £23.90 is the maximum possible fare for an off peak journey, so there is nothing to lose by waiting.

My suspicion is that they have withdrawn advance fares until timetables have been confirmed. If there is eventually bus replacement then the advance fares may not re-appear but my experience is that if trains run then they will re-surface.

The same has happened on my local line, where we currently have a 6 week emergency line closure. All advance fares have been taken off sale for the duration to try to control numbers of people on the buses.

If you buy a £23.90 ticket now it is valid on any train (or bus!) on the route that day. So while you nominally book for a scheduled train you can take any that day.

The other option you could do is to buy a Southern Railway Day Save Ticket for £25. That gives unlimited travel on Southern Trains (that does not include route Godalming as that is South Western) but it would allow you to drop down to Barnham/Chichester (if you wanted to do even a side trip to Portsmouth) then take the West Coastway to London via Preston Park or Brighton. It can be bought up to 3 days prior.

I am looking at the one bus a week from Arundel to Horsham- it takes 1:25. A railway bus should be a bit faster, so a bus replacement would end up adding an estimated 1 hour to the journey time.

The other thing to bear in mind of course is that Victoria could be closed for engineering for all that anyone knows, so trains run from Arundel but the train is then diverted north of East Croydon to London Bridge!!

Ah yes, good point on the flexibility of the £23.90 ticket. And now knowing that it won't go higher, I may as well wait, as you originally advised.

The idea of a slower, perhaps more scenic route by bus has its appeal, since I'm in no hurry that day.

We'll have just spent a week in Chichester, with a possible side trip to Portsmouth. But I could relax (as was my plan anyway) and enjoy an extra night in Arundel.

The trains on the bank holiday Monday, May 27, do not have the cautionary disruption message, seemingly wrapping up the works to allow bank holiday makers to return to London. All trains on Monday are showing £23.90. Either the advance fares were bought up early, or bank holiday weekends aren't eligible for the highly discounted advance fares, which reappear on Tuesday, May 28.

The cheaper hotel (if available that busy weekend) far outweighs any consideration of train fares.

Ok, thanks for helping me understand the relevant scenarios! Possible scenic bus vs an extra night in Arundel!

the recent train strike announcements do not appear to impact this bit of the journey, but then they do have nearly 7 weeks to decide to.

I know that some strongly advocate buses over trains but I am in the other camp. Even though you are up higher in a double decker, as I am sure you remember, they don't tend to take the most scenic routes, whereas with the trains at least all you see is countryside instead of vehicles. And the approach to Victoria from about Redhill and then East Croydon is mostly built up over the roads so you are looking down at the neighbourhoods....

Your choice of course.

Oh dear, I hadn't heard about the "recent train strikes" ...

If a train strike happens then you will have two weeks notice of it (on or before 12 May). I, at least, was expecting Easter strikes but they are actually the weekend after Easter to affect the return to work after the Easter holiday.

The Sunday before, 19 May, advance train fares of £7 each are now on sale from Arundel to London, so if trains run there should be advance fares for you.

If you buy a ticket for the Sunday and strikes happen with no service offered all fare types are accepted automatically the day before the strike and normally for up to 2 days afterwards. You don't have to buy or amend your ticket in any way.

I see ₤7.00 advance fares for Arundel to London on May 24 and May 28, 29 - before and after the bank holiday weekend; but none on May 25, 26, or 27, the Sat/Sun/Mon of the bank holiday weekend when tickets are all ₤23.90 for Off-Peak.

So, either I've missed every single advance fare ticket for all 3 days (including 26 May, when I plan to travel) or there never were any.

I'll still wait and see, because why not.

@cwsocial-

Good news, the trains on 26 May have been confirmed this morning (sometime between 4am and 12.30pm). I've had this on daily monitoring since the last post.

There is NO engineering work that day, so trains are running as normal through from Arundel.

Bad news- no advance fares yet issued. I would wait 24 or 48 hours and see if those are issued- there may just be a system lag between confirming train times and release of advance fares. If not issued by Thursday morning your time then you can assume there are none, and just buy the full fare flexible ticket as previously discussed.

Wow, thank you for the good news. And for setting a monitor and checking back to advise!

I'll do as you suggest and give it a window, then get my ticket. Thank you!

ETA: you had gotten my travel date right, when I had gotten it wrong in my most recent (now corrected) post. Nice.

Yesterday, I noticed advance fares of £7 are avalable on my route on 26th May!

Unfortunately, I had purchased my ticket about a week ago, after leaving something altogether different to the "last minute" didn't work out well and made me generally nervous about waiting. I could pay the £5 fee to refund my Off-Peak ticket and buy 1 (or even 2) Advance Fares, and still come out ahead. But instead ...

I decided to book Sunday lunch in Arundel and spend more time relaxing before heading back to London at whatever time I feel like, as allowed by my too-early-purchase. There's always a bright side!

Advance Fares are also now available for my trip to Bletchley, but I truly am going to wait on those, to allow complete flexibility on the day, especially the return..... as per your suggestion, isn31c, on a different thread.

Well, only Off Peak tickets available still for my trip same day Arundel to Gatwick. But I think I am ok with that. I don’t think I would see much savings, even if the Advance tickets pop up later.

Gosh they took their time to surface. I was watching for quite a few days after the times were released, and had likewise given it up as a bad job.

Yes, Bletchley I think would just be too restrictive to buy advance tickets.

This week I have done 4 long distance trips (and 2 more to come next week) which I would normally have done one per week over a 6 week period on advanced tickets. Instead I stitched them all together as one week of travelling, doing a fantastic mileage and wearing me out, but on a regional rail rover. Not only has that worked out cheaper overall, it has been truly liberating to be free of time restrictions, and use any operator's trains and change routes at will to get round delays.

Advance tickets and split ticketing has it's place. Sometimes paying more, as for you, reaps benefits.

it may be hard to predict just when you will be done at Bletchley Park. I completely agree on flexible Off-Peak return on that day. Which day is it?

It's May 29, a Wednesday. I completely agree that I'll leave Bletchley options open as I will most certainly have dinner up there before returning to Victoria.

@cwsocial- the good news is that we now know there are no rail strikes over the Bank Holiday weekend- so Arundel to London at least is safe.

This week we will find out whether they do what they did after the early May holiday weekend, and strike the week after!!

That's great news, thank you!

And, of the two, getting back to London is the more critical. I may be able to rearrange my visit to Bletchley to the following weekend, if necessary.

Thanks isn31c and Nigel for your advice about train tickets between Arundel and London Victoria and then London Victoria and Bletchley. There were no engineering works, no train strikes, just on-time trains to all the right places! And flexbility on my tickets was perfect to let me take my time in both Arundel and at Bletchley.

Thanks for your advance help, which allowed me to relax and enjoy my days!

CWsocial- Pleased that all went well on your day trip to Bletchley. While Advance tickets have their place, my thread of travelling as a local (which I need to finish this weekend) shows the benefits of flexible tickets sometimes.