As previously flagged, from Monday 17 January 2022 South Western Railway (SWR) will be introducing a new temporary timetable designed to ensure reliability for customers and cater to key workers, school pupils and those who cannot work from home.
The emergence of the Omicron variant has necessitated the need for a new timetable, with staff shortages across SWR having led to unavoidable short-notice cancellations. With current guidance to work from home, the new timetable will sufficiently meet current demand. Rigorous planning has gone into developing this timetable to deliver the right level of service for the current situation, but SWR will continue to monitor its services to ensure that they continue to deliver for its customers. The changes will remain under review going forward.
Core timetables are available through the SWR website at https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey/timetables, with journey planners set to be updated on a week-by-week basis. Updates will take place towards the end of each week, so customers are advised to check before they travel via www.southwesternrailway.com
The key changes to flag are as follows:
- Waterloo to Exeter services will split at Salisbury
- Waterloo to Weymouth services will split at Bournemouth
- The Shepperton branch will reduce to hourly
- Waterloo to Alton will reduce to hourly
- Waterloo to Basingstoke will reduce to hourly
- The last train of each day will be earlier than at present