Gatwick airport travel chaos as trains from London cancelled over next three Sundays
Gatwick airport will be cut off from London by rail for the next three Sundays.
Engineering work is taking place on 25 February, 4 March and 11 March to replace a key junction at Earlswood, where the fast and slow lines to the airport converge. It is part of a £300m track modernisation programme.
Services will end late on Saturday night and re-start at around 4am on Monday morning.
David Bennett, Gatwick’s surface transport operations manager, said: “Passengers planning to travel to or from Gatwick Airport by train during any of the next three Sundays should plan their journey carefully and allow extra time.”
On the affected days, trains to and from London will start and terminate at Redhill, six miles north of Gatwick, with a bus connection to the airport. Overall journey times are likely to increase by at least half-an-hour.
National Express is planning extra coach services during the rail blockade.
The London-Brighton main line, on which Gatwick is situated, is undergoing a major overhaul. Work will take place between Gatwick and Three Bridges, the station south of the airport, over the May bank holiday weekend.
In the next 12 months, the line from Three Bridges to Brighton will be completely closed for 18 days, from 20-28 October and 16-24 February 2019, for work to repair tunnels on the line.
From May this year, new direct Thameslink services will start from Gatwick to both Cambridge and Peterborough for the first time.
Elsewhere, engineering work over Easter will lead to disruption. London Euston station will be closed completely all day on Easter Sunday, 1 April, cutting links to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.
Work over Easter at London Paddington will disrupt West of England and South Wales services on GWR, and reduce the frequency on the Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect services.
