South Western Railway announces reduced timetable due to Omicron variant

South Western Railway has announced cuts to services from 17th January 2022 affecting Exeter to Basingstoke.

The reduced timetable is due to the impact of the COVID-19 variant Omicron creating staff shortages.

South Western’s Managing Director, Claire Mann said: “The spread of the Omicron variant has had a significant impact on our railway with fewer people using the train, and staff shortages impacting on our ability to consistently deliver the current timetable.

“Having assessed demand and spoken to our industry colleagues, we believe this new timetable is the most effective means of ensuring our customers receive a reliable service, with short-notice cancellations minimised.”

The new timetable is designed to ensure reliability for customers. It will cater to key workers, school pupils and those who can no longer work from home.

A key timetable change affecting Bournemouth is the Waterloo to Weymouth service which will split at Bournemouth. The last train of each day will be earlier than at present.

Journey planners will be updated on a week-by-week basis.

The core timetables are available via the SWR website, but SWR are advising customers to check their journey as close to their time of travel as possible.

The new timetable, which will ensure reliability and cater for key workers, school pupils and those who cannot work from home, can be found here: https://t.co/TdO4CquhIQ

Journey planners will be updated weekly, so please check journeys as close to travelling as possible

— SWR Help (@SW_Help) January 12, 2022