Southern to provide more trains during Olympic Games

More trains and extra carriages are being laid on between London and Sussex to cope with the extra demand expected during the Olympic Games.

Southern Railway is providing additional late-night services from Victoria station to cope with the predicted higher number of passengers.

There will also be extra carriages on many off-peak trains during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

And Southern services will be stepped up when Surrey stages Olympic cycling.

The rail company, which provides services between the Sussex coast and London Victoria, is basing its extra provision on ticket-sales data from the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Considerably busier

As a result, there will be extra trains from Victoria to East Croydon, Three Bridges, Gatwick Airport, Haywards Heath and Brighton after midnight throughout the Olympics, from 27 July to 12 August, and Paralympics, which run from 29 August to 9 September.

And the existing Victoria-to-Worthing, Brighton and Eastbourne train, which normally runs at 00:05, will begin 35 minutes later during the Games.

Southern has said it will also lay on more carriages, providing a total of 86,000 extra seats, on daytime off-peak services between Worthing, Eastbourne and Brighton which are not already at maximum capacity.

Games organisers are predicting hundreds of thousands of extra visitors to London during the Olympics and are warning that some trains and stations will be considerably busier than normal.

An influx of visitors is also expected in Surrey when the Olympic cycling road race is staged, on 28 and 29 July.

Southern is running extra services over that weekend between both Victoria and Waterloo and Epsom, Dorking and Horsham.