Honiton: Rail passengers advised to avoid travel due to major landslip

Rail passengers have been advised to avoid travel due to a major landslip that has taken place on the Honiton line. 

The landslip took place near Hook, which is on the line between Basingstoke and Woking. According to South Western Railway, all non-essential travel should be postponed. 

There will be no through trains from Exeter to London Waterloo today (January 17). All services to London Waterloo will terminate at Basingstoke, where an extremely limited shuttle service will connect with Woking. 

Other towns including Weymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton will also be affected. 

South Western Railway (SWR) will add to the skeleton timetable in the coming days, but, given the scale of the repair work needed, customers are urged to check for the latest updates. 

The landslip near Hook was one of 11 separate incidents which have affected SWR's infrastructure, which included major flooding and further landslips in other areas. 

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. An extremely limited number of services will be able to run between Basingstoke and Woking, but we are asking customers to avoid travelling through the affected area if they can.

"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."

Customers should check the latest travel advice here.