Why is the same train late almost every day?

[rs1952]

theplayingmantis said:

incorrect on Greater Anglia. On time trains are held for always late Intercity Norwich trains. Likewise the merge point at Shenfield, if a train on one line is late the other isnt allowed to go in front. Buggering up everyone else simply because one train is late.

I'd like some examples to check that out in detail if you could give them - it would be interesting to a nerd like me...

The former Great Eastern line is not one that I know much about (used perhaps 10 times in my lifetime, and most of those going Liverpool St to Harwich or vice versa)

However, only last night I was watching an old video I'd recorded from TV in the late 90s that was dealing with various pinch points around the network. There was a section dealing with Welwyn viaduct where the 4-track ECML goes down to 2. They were interviewing the driver of a down stopper who told the interviewer that they were booked to stand at one particular signal for 4 minutes to allow an express to go through first (the fact that there is an intermediate station on the 2-track section doesn't help either).

Once again, a passenger who didn't know about this would b sitting on his "on time" train and note that it stopped for those 4 minutes whilst something else went by. The "obvious" conclusion he would draw was that his on-time train was being made late by an already late train.

Sometimes the bleedin' obvious ain't so obvious when you know the full facts

[Riley Blue]

O/H decided to catch the 6:00 Birmingham to Glasgow train this morning (7:02 at Chesterfield) and it's five minutes late at Derby though Trainline advises it will be on time at Chesterfield - or will it, it's a minute early at Clay Cross?

Is there an app that gives the same level of timing detail as http://raildar.co.uk/radar.html?

[Gareth1974]

Riley Blue said:

O/H decided to catch the 6:00 Birmingham to Glasgow train this morning (7:02 at Chesterfield) and it's five minutes late at Derby though Trainline advises it will be on time at Chesterfield - or will it, it's a minute early at Clay Cross?

Is there an app that gives the same level of timing detail as http://raildar.co.uk/radar.html?

That train has it's schedule padded out with 6 minutes pathing time between Derby and Chesterfield as it's booked to follow an ECS to Ambergate. The systems use the logic that if a service is running late, the pathing time in it's schedule should be recovered as in theory you won't be following a train as per the plan, and should achieve the normal running time Derby to Chesterfield.

[theplayingmantis]

rs1952 said:

I'd like some examples to check that out in detail if you could give them - it would be interesting to a nerd like me...

The former Great Eastern line is not one that I know much about (used perhaps 10 times in my lifetime, and most of those going Liverpool St to Harwich or vice versa)

However, only last night I was watching an old video I'd recorded from TV in the late 90s that was dealing with various pinch points around the network. There was a section dealing with Welwyn viaduct where the 4-track ECML goes down to 2. They were interviewing the driver of a down stopper who told the interviewer that they were booked to stand at one particular signal for 4 minutes to allow an express to go through first (the fact that there is an intermediate station on the 2-track section doesn't help either).

Once again, a passenger who didn't know about this would b sitting on his "on time" train and note that it stopped for those 4 minutes whilst something else went by. The "obvious" conclusion he would draw was that his on-time train was being made late by an already late train.

Sometimes the bleedin' obvious ain't so obvious when you know the full facts

Not sure how i could evidence this other than recording the driver (on the rare occasion they bother to say anything/apologize) for the reason we are stationary, not leaving despite being on time.

[rs1952]

theplayingmantis said:

Not sure how i could evidence this other than recording the driver (on the rare occasion they bother to say anything/apologize) for the reason we are stationary, not leaving despite being on time.

Just give me the times of one of the trains (eg. 0800 Liverpool St to Norwich, or the local service involved) together with the location which could be approximate (eg "at Shenfield" or "between Marks Tey and Colchester"), and some dates when these things were observed.

I'm looking forward to a "dig around." Perhaps Gareth is as well!

[theplayingmantis]

When it next occurs I will be sure too. Will also refer you Twitter and or the journey check sight that has this reason in it!

[Riley Blue]

Gareth1974 said:

Riley Blue said:

O/H decided to catch the 6:00 Birmingham to Glasgow train this morning (7:02 at Chesterfield) and it's five minutes late at Derby though Trainline advises it will be on time at Chesterfield - or will it, it's a minute early at Clay Cross?

Is there an app that gives the same level of timing detail as http://raildar.co.uk/radar.html?

That train has it's schedule padded out with 6 minutes pathing time between Derby and Chesterfield as it's booked to follow an ECS to Ambergate. The systems use the logic that if a service is running late, the pathing time in it's schedule should be recovered as in theory you won't be following a train as per the plan, and should achieve the normal running time Derby to Chesterfield.

Aha, now I'm starting to understand the complexities of train scheduling. I'll pass that on to O/H who, I suspect, will switch to the Glasgow train.

Any opinion about the most accurate app for an Android phone?

[rs1952]

theplayingmantis said:

When it next occurs I will be sure too. Will also refer you Twitter and or the journey check sight that has this reason in it!

Thanks - I'll enjoy taking a look! Just as a matter of interest I looked at how the Liverpool St to Norwich services held up yesterday. Oh dear... Something must have been up on that route because virtually nothing ran to time at all and that, despite what people on Twitter might have you believe, is very much the exception rather than the rule.

However, whilst waiting to get some information that I can dig into, I'd like to pick up on something you said on Tuesday:

theplayingmantis said:

The intercity trains to Norwich are so archaic they still have slam doors and thus never leave Norwich or Liverpool Street on time. Ever. Norwich it doesn't cause so many problems as its not a busy station, but leaving Liverpool street it knocks on to every train service for the next hour or so. Its incredibly annoying as they are late for such a stupid reason - old rolling stock.

Whilst it is true that trains fitted with slam doors take longer to dispatch from their stops (longer dwell times is the internal jargon), the people that construct the timetable will of course know that, with dwell times being appropriate to the nature if the train. It is simply not true that trains run late simply because they have slam doors. What causes extended dwell times are tardy handling by station staff and dispatchers, and/or the Auntie Flo's of this world saying their tearful goodbyes and failing to shut the fking door... Then you get a couple of tools, one at each end of the train, who have left the doors open so the dispatcher has to walk down there to close it. Sometimes (and this happens in Chippenham here we too had 100% slam door HSTs until last year), the traon may well be ready to depart but the signals are against it because Thingley Junction just down the road is signalled for a train coming off the Melksham line (conflicting movement) so the passenger train won't be going anywhere until the line clears.

[theplayingmantis]

Oh don’t get me wrong it’s not the trains fault it’s the pissants employed to ensure there shut and the dwell time is met. They should factor in joe publics idiocy in not helping out I would hope. But if such archaic trains were not in service they wouldn’t have those problems.

As per twitter GA constantly have punctuality issues albeit not massive (they have got better at big cock ups in recent months although this week has been bad mornings particularly) but 3 mins here 5 mins there when both morning and evening are delayed like this everyday then it all adds up...annoying GA only allow claims over 30 mins and recent bigger delays to London from anywhere within Essex are typically just short of that disallowing claims.

[rs1952]

theplayingmantis said:

Oh don’t get me wrong it’s not the trains fault it’s the pissants employed to ensure there shut and the dwell time is met. They should factor in joe publics idiocy in not helping out I would hope. But if such archaic trains were not in service they wouldn’t have those problems.

And there you pick up on an interesting conundrum for timetable planners. People can be idiots, or at least simply not realising the consequences of their actions. Off on a tangent, we had a situation around here until yesterday when our regular bus driver retired. He was quite happy for passengers to natter away to him about nothing of consequence as they got on ot off, and as a result never ran to time. Those self-same people would than complain "your bus is always late!"

You can factor in an average idiocy allowance into the dwell time. If you factor in too much, then Uncle Tom Cobley, his wife and all the local media will start bleating about the trains being slower now than they were 30 years ago. Catch 22...

I am afraid that if you think automatic doors are a panacea then I regret you are in for a disappointment when trains with them are introduced. They speed up station dwell times because no longer does anyone have to physically check that the doors are all closed, but they will not stop people getting on at the last nano-second, or leaving suitcases blocking the doors, or 101 other things that the public can do to delay trains if they set their minds to it...

theplayingmantis said:

As per twitter GA constantly have punctuality issues albeit not massive (they have got better at big cock ups in recent months although this week has been bad mornings particularly) but 3 mins here 5 mins there when both morning and evening are delayed like this everyday then it all adds up...annoying GA only allow claims over 30 mins and recent bigger delays to London from anywhere within Essex are typically just short of that disallowing claims.

I agree that "drip feed" minor delays on the same commuter train day after day can be a source of major irritation. "Disasters I can cope with - it's the little things that get under the skin" syndrome. There is a tendency to try to overcome this by shoe-horning as many extra minutes as they can get away with into the schedules at the end of the journey. But this of course doesn't help the poor sod who gets off at the last-but-one station where the train is 5 late, only to find it was right time into its final destination. I understand that performance stats are going to be amended to take this sort of thing into account, but I haven't kept my ear to the ground on this one so I don't know what exactly they intend to monitor, or when they intend to start monitoring it.

[basherX]

rs1952 said:

... But this of course doesn't help the poor sod who gets off at the last-but-one station where the train is 5 late, only to find it was right time into its final destination. I understand that performance stats are going to be amended to take this sort of thing into account, but I haven't kept my ear to the ground on this one so I don't know what exactly they intend to monitor, or when they intend to start monitoring it....

I hope something IS being done about this. On some routes there's clearly a, for want of a better word, buffer in the scheduling between the penultimate and final stop. It skews the punctuality statistics. As does, I think but stand to be corrected, non-stopping at stations to "recover the service" meaning that a train may well have run to time measured by destination arrival but a fair proportion of passengers couldn't actually use the service.

[Gareth1974]

theplayingmantis said:

Oh don’t get me wrong it’s not the trains fault it’s the pissants employed to ensure there shut and the dwell time is met. They should factor in joe publics idiocy in not helping out I would hope. But if such archaic trains were not in service they wouldn’t have those problems.

Modem rolling stock doesn’t always help the situation. On a line I work with, new units have been introduced to replace those dating from the 90’s. Both types of unit have automatic doors, however it’s been identified that the new units take 10 seconds longer per station to run through the door opening and closing cycle. With 10 stations on the route, suddenly the train is a minute and a half deficient in its journey time. In addition, large increases in the number of passengers on the route over the past 25 years meant that the timetable was already difficult to deliver, as many station stops only have 30 seconds dwell time, which isn’t enough at many stations now.

The answer would seem to be to acknowledge this, and add 5 minutes to the overall journey time, but this would hardly look like progress. And end to end journey times tend to be part of the service level agreements the franchise holder enters into with the DfT, so they don’t have the flexibility to do this anyway. And even if they did, the ‘ripple’ effect behind would be difficult to manage, as you’d also need to add the same 5 minutes into the express from London behind, which is planned to be right behind it when it terminates as it is.

[DIW35]

In our area there are more than a few timetable clashes that try to put 2 trains on the same bit of line at the same time. Inevitably one of them always gets delayed.

[Gareth1974]

DIW35 said:

In our area there are more than a few timetable clashes that try to put 2 trains on the same bit of line at the same time. Inevitably one of them always gets delayed.

Post up the details, I'll have a look

[rs1952]

Gareth1974 said:

DIW35 said:

In our area there are more than a few timetable clashes that try to put 2 trains on the same bit of line at the same time. Inevitably one of them always gets delayed.

Post up the details, I'll have a look

I'd be interested in that too, bearing in mind that such a thing would never appear in a Working Timetable. That said, you could well have, say, a 30-second headway at a junction which may look to "civvies" as though it is a timetable clash.

[DIW35]

Gareth1974 said:

DIW35 said:

In our area there are more than a few timetable clashes that try to put 2 trains on the same bit of line at the same time. Inevitably one of them always gets delayed.

Post up the details, I'll have a look

One I can think of off the top of my head is at Rainham. Up train is booked to arrive at 06:40. Down train is booked to arrive in Up bay at 06:41 which involves crossing the line in front of the Up train. Up train is then booked to leave at 06:42. If kept in this order it inevitably delays both. If the Up train is on time, the down train is usually held until after it is gone. If the Up train is already late it’s possible for the Down train to cross over and arrive first without delaying the Up train any further, but only if it is running late by 3 mins or more.

There are several at Faversham where the arrival and departure times are only separated by a minute which can cause problems due to the time it takes to clear the junction.

[rs1952]

Now that this thread has been bumped it reminded me that I had something else to say about this:

theplayingmantis said:

...on the rare occasion they bother to say anything/apologize) for the reason we are stationary

I appeared to have identified a problem during the course of my rail rover journeys, and it has been confirmed (probably) on subsequent railway journeys. This is that the PA systems on some trains are either crap in the first place, or poorly maintained. Brief examples follow, the first involved a full and standing XC train running south from Brum. I was standing to Cheltenham, which didn't exactly help my mood at the time

We were running exceptionally slowly between Bromsgrove and Ashchurch (not all the way - just between Spetchley and Abbotswood for nerds like me who know the route backwards...) losing 13 minutes. When we got to Cheltenham I saw the guard and suggested that it would have been helpful if he'd made an announcement about it. He said he had - there was a level crossing failure. I told him that I didn't bloody hear it.... Hmmm...

A few days later I'm on another XC train from Reading to Brum and the guards announcements were barely audible. Then the train catering guy came on the PA and his voice was booming. As the guard came through checking tickets, it was clear that the bloke could project his voice very well. So I told him about this and, to cut a long story short, it turned out that one of the microphones on the train was crap. He stopped using it and used the other one(s) and his voice boomed merrily.

I was then on a Chippenham to Westbury 2-car class 165. The announcements were fine, and then at Melksham the family from hell got on -screaming kids, screaming parents screaming at screaming kids - you get the idea... I went to the next carriage, and the announcements in there were virtually inaudible again. I did tell the guard outside Westbury station (he was there having a fag the same as I was) and he promised to make a note of it. Whether he did is a moot poont because when I went back to the platform the DMU we came down on was just leaving with another crew, but that's a different matter.

Whilst I don't doubt that there are some lazy surly buggers around in the ranks of train crews who don't make announcements, these discoveries put a different light on the matter, where some staff may indeed be making the announcements but they aren't being heard by the passengers. It is also difficult to see how an indivudial guard or driver is going to know that there is fault on his particular PA system unless one of the passengers says something and, as most of 'em just get on and stay in the same seat until they get off, they aren't going to know anyway.

A bit of conundrum, perhaps?

[Gareth1974]

DIW35 said:

One I can think of off the top of my head is at Rainham. Up train is booked to arrive at 06:40. Down train is booked to arrive in Up bay at 06:41 which involves crossing the line in front of the Up train. Up train is then booked to leave at 06:42. If kept in this order it inevitably delays both. If the Up train is on time, the down train is usually held until after it is gone. If the Up train is already late it’s possible for the Down train to cross over and arrive first without delaying the Up train any further, but only if it is running late by 3 mins or more.

Have just looked at the Rainham one so far. It does look tight, so I looked up the Timetable planning rules. which show a increase in the planning headways for this location to take effect in the next timetable.

The 0640-0642 train is retimed in the next timetable to be 0643-0644.

[theplayingmantis]

rs1952 said:

I appeared to have identified a problem during the course of my rail rover journeys, and it has been confirmed (probably) on subsequent railway journeys. This is that the PA systems on some trains are either crap in the first place, or poorly maintained. Brief examples follow, the first involved a full and standing XC train running south from Brum. I was standing to Cheltenham, which didn't exactly help my mood at the time

We were running exceptionally slowly between Bromsgrove and Ashchurch (not all the way - just between Spetchley and Abbotswood for nerds like me who know the route backwards...) losing 13 minutes. When we got to Cheltenham I saw the guard and suggested that it would have been helpful if he'd made an announcement about it. He said he had - there was a level crossing failure. I told him that I didn't bloody hear it.... Hmmm...

A few days later I'm on another XC train from Reading to Brum and the guards announcements were barely audible. Then the train catering guy came on the PA and his voice was booming. As the guard came through checking tickets, it was clear that the bloke could project his voice very well. So I told him about this and, to cut a long story short, it turned out that one of the microphones on the train was crap. He stopped using it and used the other one(s) and his voice boomed merrily.

I was then on a Chippenham to Westbury 2-car class 165. The announcements were fine, and then at Melksham the family from hell got on -screaming kids, screaming parents screaming at screaming kids - you get the idea... I went to the next carriage, and the announcements in there were virtually inaudible again. I did tell the guard outside Westbury station (he was there having a fag the same as I was) and he promised to make a note of it. Whether he did is a moot poont because when I went back to the platform the DMU we came down on was just leaving with another crew, but that's a different matter.

Whilst I don't doubt that there are some lazy surly buggers around in the ranks of train crews who don't make announcements, these discoveries put a different light on the matter, where some staff may indeed be making the announcements but they aren't being heard by the passengers. It is also difficult to see how an indivudial guard or driver is going to know that there is fault on his particular PA system unless one of the passengers says something and, as most of 'em just get on and stay in the same seat until they get off, they aren't going to know anyway.

A bit of conundrum, perhaps?

albeit there are some crappy pa's thats not my issue. issue is they without fail announce where we arriving, but many dont bother to apologize or give reason for late, or even acknowledge it.

that said probably less annoying than the chippy morning jubilee line driver from stratford, who clearly loves the sound of his own voice. hear him once mildly amusing at first station...thereafter gets on everyone's tits and wont shut up!

[MitchT]

Trains on my line (Airedale line between Leeds & Skipton) are consistently 2-3 minutes late. They're also hideously overcrowded at anything remotely close to a busy time of day. Part of the problem is the delay caused by the guard being unable to get to the hatch by the doors that they have to open to unlock the doors due to said overcrowding. I'm fiercely in favour of guards being retained on trains but I do feel the driver should have a button in the cab that they can press to release the doors as soon as the train stops to circumvent this hassle, even if it's better for the guard to retain control over closing them.