I travelled on a pair of 455s from Reading today and I was astonished at how slack the schedule was. The crew were certainly not rushing but it waited time at several stations and got to Waterloo five minutes early. Such was the leisurely rate of progress that I thought we must be running late, until I checked on Realtime trains. This makes the tight schedules on the Shepperton line all the more surprising.
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Trains skipping stations when they are less than 5 minutes late
- Thread starter davethebus002@
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It's remarkable how much difference the very slow door cycle on a 450 can make. Down Windsor's used to consistently run a few minutes late apart from the odd day a 455 would be substituted & they'd be bang on time.
Yes good point. I have checked some other runs with 450s and they have run one minute late for most of the journey. Incredible. I reckon a 455 could knock four or five minutes off between Reading and Richmond. If they were driven like the 317s used to be, they could knock off a few more.
If the service is very infrequent it's unlikely stops will be pulled unless there's a very good reason.
Would infrequent be classes as any service that runs hourly or less or would it be 2 hourly or less?
Would depend on the overall frequency of the line(s) for that operator I suppose. A metro operator wouldn’t even have a 1tph service timetabled anywhere as an example
So what is a disabled passenger, content they are able to disembark independently at their planned destination and so no assistance arranged, but without a clue what accessibility is like in the station they now need to change trains at, meant to do?
Depends on the disability - they aren’t all the same.
If they’re unable to cope with something like a change to stopping pattern they should probably arrange assistance in advance, as otherwise the railway won’t even know they’re there. Particularly in areas where there is no staff member on board the train to speak to.
A core part of disabled people feelijg equal members of society is for them to be able to get around independently wherever possible, and to be able to exercise the same choices and flexibility as everyone else. To be able to feel 'I know the layout of this station. If colleagues decide to go for a coffee together after work I can do that. I'm not tied to a particular train for which I have arranged assistance'. 'I can choose to visit friends spontaneously'.
Of course there are times when major incidents may disrupt trains. What they don't expect is to have arrange assistance and be tied down day, day out, just because of the risk of skipping stations for operational convenience.
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And a great many (most) people with a disability manage to get around independently. Why do you insist on lumping all disabilities together?
Well unfortunately the reality of a mass transit system is that it can’t be used by wheelchair users or those who require higher levels of assistance as easily as it can be by those who don’t have those needs - and nobody is prepared to come up with the money to enable it to do so.
On my local network, for example, there are no onboard staff, many stations aren’t wheelchair accessible and/or are unmanned, so it clearly can’t provide a “turn up and go” service for those with greater mobility needs, along the lines you suggest - so the solution is to book assistance.
Trains skip-stopping isn’t that common, and it isn’t done for “operational convenience”, rather than to minimise delay for the majority. If someone isn’t able to adapt to a change of stopping patterns how will they cope if a train has to be taken out of service due to a fault, has to be terminated short due to a fatality etc.
norbitonflyer
Established Member
The inexorable trend to make "turn up and go" fares prohibitively expensive (see LNERs abolition of off-peak fares) is beginning to make that a thing of the past for all of us.
I was on a late running train recently that was announced would be missing out a couple of stops. One of the stops was required by a wheelchair user who had arranged for assistance to meet her there. However she now had to detrain at what was all intents and purposes a foreign station to her. She needed a ramp to enable her to get off the train, so staff were required to help. We sat there for 20 minutes before anyone turned up. Staff apologising because they had to explain to the large numbers of people detraining the reason and telling them their next available service. The train eventually departed 28 minutes after the initial message it was missing stops. Had the train carried on and called as booked, the resulatant delay would have been far less than the decision to run it fast.
It varies considerably by route. To use examples in this thread, Chester to Liverpool has virtually no slack. Basically four minutes every 90 minutes and the crew need to change ends in that time. At the other end of the scale is Waterloo to Reading, 26 minutes at one end and 15 at the other, with quite an easy schedule too. I bet that doesn't skip stops very often.
Unless her intended station was closed for some reason, the quickest solution would have been to stop there as booked.
Guildford to Waterloo via Epsom is 1 an hour most hours. On Sundays Guildford to Waterloo via Cobham is also 1 an hour all day.
I'm sure there are other examples across the country.
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Been on plenty of Waterloo to Reading trains that have skipped stops for relatively small delays. It happens.
Genuinely astonished. Do the crew have breaks at Reading? Nothing else to do there for 26 minutes.
Just remain on the unit for the return, I would guess. Chance to grab some food and stretch the legs and it's a reasonable turnaround with a buffer. Sometimes route geography means these things happen at the fringes of the network where the timetable is built for the most constrained parts (e.g. the Clapham Junction area). Up to London might be subject to more delays. Not sure it's an official break point for SWR.
43096
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Why do you insist on defending the indefensible with the railway every single time?
Too often the railway fails with even very basic customer service. Too often it’s the “Carol Beer” experience. Yet you think it’s acceptable. Why?
I'm not sure what you're asking for. For every time someone refers to people with disabilities to add a qualification that it doesn't apply to everyone with a disability? I think we can all work that out. It would lead to some very convoluted sentances otherwise.
Thst wasn't the point I was making. I was talking about where a disabled passenger does know that their own station and, where relevant, the trains used is accessible, and so is contrnt to operate independently.
Whatvare you suggesting? That somone who do not consider they require assistance should nevertheless book it, five days a week all year for getting to and from work, just in case a train skips a stop? That is a very poor use of resources and would take staff away from those who really need help.
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I suspected as much. The crew on my train on Wednesday were on the train ready to go 15 minutes before departure.
I would hope all concerned, passengers and staff, would regard it as just what you do as a member of society, to help ensure the disabled person was supported appropriately to get home.
I would expect that all passengers would board the next train heading in the right direction. If the line is completely blocked then everyone will need road transport. I'd like to think that most staff on the ground would assist all passengers as best they can. I'm sure that most do but I have seen it go spectacularly wrong sometimes.
You'd be amazed how often the up Readings are late even by Virginia Water
Any idea what causes the lateness? Volume of passengers? As I mentioned in my post upthread, the train I went on did not appear to be rushing but had no problem keeping to the schedule.
No sure as I don't travel from Reading often enough. But it's quite common to be delayed from Weybridge at Virginia Water waiting for the Reading to pass. It's not usually more than a minute or 2 but they're timetabled 5 minutes apart so given the long layover at Reading you wouldn't really expect it to happen that often. The up Weybridge will then often delay the up Windsor at Staines by a couple of minutes.
It is heavily wooded next to the line in a lot of places so leaf fall season will be an issue despite some recent efforts at cutting back. Looking at Recent Train Times the last month looks to have been pretty good but Wokingham & Sunningdale seem to feature disproportionately as places where delays occur which suggests the level crossing at those stations may be an issue.
ivorytoast28
Member
And this service is one that regularly skips stops. Generally those between Surbiton and Waterloo, but still.. the amount of times I've been left stranded for over an hour at Surbiton just trying to get to Wimbledon thanks to swr skip stopping every single train is unacceptable. They only care about getting people from each station to Waterloo.
Everything else exists because it's convenient to stop each train at multiple points otherwise it wouldn't
43096
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There’s two reasons that I can see from having used that service regularly. First, the door cycle time on the Desiros is incredibly slow, which extends dwell times significantly. Second is inconsistent (but deteriorating) train crew performance: some guards are slow to release doors and drivers from the James May/milkfloat school of driving. There is considerable variation, even on the same day/same conditions.
Even with the extra three minutes added to the timetable between Reading and Staines since WorstGroup took over - a habit brought over from FGW that doesn’t address the core issue and just encourages ever more sloppy operating - trains still routinely arrive at Staines late.
Spmetimes it works. Only yesterday a morning Hounslow roundabout service picked up a 22 minute delay at Barnes station for some reason, where I was diverted past it, it made all the stops around the loop, with the following service hard behind, but then ran nonstop back to Waterloo, picking up the entire delay. keeping the next diagram intact, having effectively lost the inward service anyway, and with another right behind, that makes sense. Nonstop at Clapham Jc on the Windsor lines must be something of a novelty.
Such examples had been explained in this thread, although people were still criticising them. Such decisions are bread and butter for controllers on metro railways, taking place daily.