Southern does u-turn over Epsom station warning (From Epsom Guardian)

Southern does u-turn over Epsom station warning for Derby Day

7:40am Friday 1st June 2012 in News By Hardeep Matharu

Southern has now said there should be no problems at Epsom station on Saturday after earlier warning racegoers to avoid it.

Earlier this week, the train company was makng announcements at stations urging people going to Saturday’s Epsom Derby, at Epsom Downs Racecourse, to avoid using the station.

It said it would be "extremely difficult" to travel to the racecourse by bus or taxi because it is undergoing major re-development and advised visitors to use Epsom Downs and Tattenham Corner stations instead.

The company then came under attack for poor planning and failing to warn people about the bottleneck sooner.

A reader commented on our story about the warning: "Why have Southern waited until now, less than a week ahead of the big days, to warn racegoers?

"This should have gone out weeks ago, to all stations and been posted at all race meetings in the country as a warning.

"This is going to be a b*lls up of massive proportions, and Epsom will get the blame.

"Well done Southern, and Network Rail should also take some blame for this too as they are profiteering from the development."

But Southern is now claiming that the number of people using the station on the day "shouldn’t cause any problems".

A spokesman said: "Due to the nature of the building work at the station, we were not sure until a week ago what we were likely to get at the station entrance in terms of access and egress.

"Once it became clear that there may have been a problem, we advised our customers as soon as we could.

"As it turns out, we will be in a better position on Saturday than we thought at the time, and although we are still advising people to use Tattenham Corner and Epsom Downs stations, we are confident that the number of people expected to use Epsom station shouldn’t cause any problems."