Exeter to London Waterloo this week?

You'll be lucky

First the strikes. Then engineering works. Now a landslip.

The chances of getting smoothly between Exeter and London Waterloo are often somewhat fraught. But now rail operator South Western Railway (SWR) is warning passengers there's little hope of going the distance, at least on Tuesday and possibly for the best part of a week.

Ar landslip in the Hook area of Hampshire is severely reducing the number of trains that can safely run on the line. Trains aren't going between Basingstoke and Waterlooo and only a limited shuttle service is in place connecting with trains at Woking.

People should check the situation before travelling for the next few days.

Sunday’s landslip was one of 11 incidents affecting infrastructure on SWR’s routes overnight on Sunday into Monday.

Claire Mann, managing director of South Western Railway, said: “We are deeply sorry for the significant disruption felt by customers across our network on Monday. What began as a major landslip at Hook was then compounded by 10 separate weather-related infrastructure failures, which have made planning and delivering a reliable train service across our network very difficult.

“We are working hard to provide a service that our customers can rely upon and unfortunately, we will be unable to run through services from Exeter, Weymouth, or Portsmouth (via Eastleigh) to London Waterloo from Tuesday. 

“With the repairs at Hook set to take at least a week to complete it is likely that further service alternations will need to be made. We are sorry for the ongoing disruption caused by the landslip and will communicate any changes to our customers as soon as possible.”