Company information

About us

We provide train services for commuters, airport users, business travellers and leisure travellers in south London, between central London and the South coast, through East and West Sussex, Surrey and parts of Kent and Hampshire.

We manage 156 stations, 120 of which have Secure Station accreditation. Southern's two principal London stations are London Victoria and London Bridge.

We operate a fleet of around 300 new or refurbished trains seven days a week and up to 24 hours a day. Each weekday, we provide 2,284 services while on Saturdays we provide 2,076 and 1,242 on Sundays. Last year, 164 million passenger journeys were made on the 414 miles of track on the Southern network . Every day on average, 446,500 passenger journeys are made.

We have approximately 4,000 staff, most of whom work at our stations and on our trains.

Southern began providing train services in 2001 when the remaining two years of the Connex South Central franchise were bought out. At the time, we were called South Central.

In 2003, the new franchise, which was to run from 2003 until 2009 was awarded to Govia (Southern's parent company) and shortly after, in 2004, South Central became Southern.

Since then, we have invested over £1billion in two new train fleets, on refurbishing our stations and trains and on a comprehensive train depot upgrade programme. We have also worked hard towards improving train service punctuality and reliability which has culminated in the consistent achievement of record levels of performance, the latest of which was 95% of every Southern train, every day, reaching its destination on time over a four-week period.

We were quick to recognise our impact in the environment and have put in place many initiatives (some ground-breaking such as re-generative braking on most of our trains) to lessen our impact and our carbon footprint. Please click below for our environmental policy.

Environmental Policy (152kb)

We have always put the passenger first and have invested heavily in our staff to give you the high levels of customer service you expect, and overall passenger satisfaction scores in the bi-annual National Passenger Survey have been increasing steadily over the years.

In 2008, Southern took over the running of the Gatwick Express service and in December of that year as part of a major timetable change, we extended Gatwick Express services to run from and to Brighton in the morning and evening weekday peak periods using additional trains. This was a major factor in the provision of extra seating capacity to alleviate crowding on the busy Brighton Main Line and the improvement of service provision across the Southern network.

In 2009, Govia was awarded the South Central franchise to run from September 2009 until July 2015.

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Southern is a trading name of Southern Railway Ltd. Registered in England under number: 06574965. Registered Office: 3rd Floor, 41-51 Grey Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 6EE. Southern Railway Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Govia limited.