Keeping track of the UK's infuriating railway quirks

Travel correspondent Simon Calder solves some of the innumerable peculiarities posed by Britain’s train system

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The Gatwick Express takes people to and from the UK’s secondbusiest airport, doesn’t it? Surely if a passenger express gets stuck behind a broken-down freight train for more than half an hour, it will be late?

And why would a ticket from A to C ever cost more than the sum of A to B and B to C? These are some of the many mysteries of the world’s maddest railway.

The Gatwick Express that doesn’t stop at Gatwick

For four decades the Gatwick Express has been connecting London Victoria with the UK’s second-busiest airport – commanding a premium for doing so. But last month I travelled on the 6.03pm from London Bridge to Bognor Regis. It was Gatwick Express rolling stock, and the route took it through the airport’s station. So I assumed (as possibly did other passengers) that it would stop at Gatwick. Instead, it passed through Gatwick at 80mph.

What’s happening? Well, the Gatwick Express may have plenty of bright-red rolling stock, but the level of demand for premium rail between London and the Sussex airport has not yet bounced back. So the heavily branded trains are used on other routes in the giant Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) franchise, which also includes Southern and Thameslink. A GTR spokesperson told me: “This train is a commuter ‘crowdbuster’ that will be replaced this May with a green Southern-branded train. We could have waited for the Southern train to become available but wanted to give our customers the benefit of an additional service as soon as possible, and the Gatwick Express branded train was available.