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Daylight saving and railways discussion

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Ken H

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Feel free to discuss anything to do with the twice yearly clocks change.

But I have 2 questions to start things off

1. What happens to timetables with the extra hour next week? Do trains just wait for an hour somewhere or arrive early. I know not much runs on sat night/sun mornings. Do the account for the extra hour in plans for engineering works? And what effects are there when clocks go forward in the spring?

2. What would be the effect on the railway if the UK were to unilaterally stop changing the clocks? It may affect Eurostar but any other stuff?
 
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matt_world2004

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What happens with things like the tube where people touch in at one time and touch out at an earlier time than when they touched in.
 

Gloster

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1 - If I remember correctly in most countries on the continent the train will usually wait until the correct departure time at the first stop (public or operational) after the clocks change. There may be some slow running on services with long distances between such stops. When it is the other way round, the public will just be warned that the train may be late later in its journey, but there will be some attempt to catch up.

2 - We would be back to the old situation with summer and winter timetables with times an hour different that lasted into the 1970s (?). I think there was a period in the mid-1990s when we changed in the autumn three weeks before or after the Continent changed. I remember that at Cherbourg there was no connecting bus from the port to the station as the bus was on the new times for the ferry, but the ferries hadn’t changed their departure time from Poole (or v.v.). I have no doubt the government would blame it all on the Europeans being deliberately awkward.
 

biko

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1 - If I remember correctly in most countries on the continent the train will usually wait until the correct departure time at the first stop (public or operational) after the clocks change. There may be some slow running on services with long distances between such stops. When it is the other way round, the public will just be warned that the train may be late later in its journey, but there will be some attempt to catch up.
I don't know how it's managed in other European countries, but the hourly overnight train services in the Netherlands run as normal as possible. But because one hour is repeated, there will be two 02:xx services, one of which will arrive earlier at some stations than it departed the previous (the one in the additional hour). When daylight saving time starts, one service just doesn't exist (the 02:xx).
 

swt_passenger

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There was a fairly detailed closed thread about the clock change back in 2019:
 

Watershed

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Do the account for the extra hour in plans for engineering works?
Yes, definitely. This is one reason why engineering blocks are often scheduled to take advantage of the extra hour. For example, Leeds station is shut overnight this year over the clock change. The extra hour will mean it can reopen earlier on the Sunday morning.
 

david1212

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Within the UK how many trains are running Sunday at 2 am ?

Logically those that are just continue on their normal stage timings. In the spring the main issue I see is the loss of an hour for cleaning, fuelling and maintenance.

Neither Caledonian Sleepers or GWR Sleepers have Saturday evening departures.
 

Falcon1200

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For those railway staff with rostered Saturday night turns, the October clock change gives an hour less to work, whereas of course in March there is an extra hour. Rarely (in my workplace) did the same people get both !
 

Watershed

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Within the UK how many trains are running Sunday at 2 am ?

Logically those that are just continue on their normal stage timings. In the spring the main issue I see is the loss of an hour for cleaning, fuelling and maintenance.

Neither Caledonian Sleepers or GWR Sleepers have Saturday evening departures.
Not very many. Most lines with overnight services on a Saturday night lost them during Covid. The Brighton Main Line is the only one I can think of off-hand.
 

Horizon22

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Within the UK how many trains are running Sunday at 2 am ?

Logically those that are just continue on their normal stage timings. In the spring the main issue I see is the loss of an hour for cleaning, fuelling and maintenance.

Neither Caledonian Sleepers or GWR Sleepers have Saturday evening departures.

Normally there's an 0134 from Paddington - Reading, but doesn't seem to be running next Sunday.

Otherwise Thameslink maybe?
 
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Gloster

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For those railway staff with rostered Saturday night turns, the October clock change gives an hour less to work, whereas of course in March there is an extra hour. Rarely (in my workplace) did the same people get both !
In the old days there were plenty of cases of finishing at 22.00 on Saturday and coming back at 06.00 on Sunday. As the clock change meant that there wasn’t eight hours rest the changeover was shifted to 07.00: whoever came on then still got their hours made up to what they were due to have. If the day man was due to work 06.00-18.00, but actually worked 07.00-18.00 on this day, they were still paid for twelve hours.
 

Eloise

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Some services used to run over London Victoria towards Gatwick. If memory serves me right we had an 02:00 to Three Bridge and then a 02:03 that ran in the following hour. The times might not be exact but there was certainly at least a minutes difference to differentiate the first 02:00 from the one an hour later. Ditto TPE over the Pennines back in the day.
 

norbitonflyer

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2 - We would be back to the old situation with summer and winter timetables with times an hour different that lasted into the 1970s (?). I think there was a period in the mid-1990s when we changed in the autumn three weeks before or after the Continent changed.
The EU harmonised its clock changes in 1996. Previously the Continent had changed in September and the UK and Ireland in October, but we got the rest of Europe to see the error of their ways!

There is now an EU proposal to discontinue the biannual changes, but of course the UK will not have to follw suit. This could lead to problems at the Irish border as NI would be out of step with the Republic for half the year.

There are very few overnight train services on Saturday nights, and many of those that exist are hourly so you just run one more or less.I recall in the 70s London Night Buses just ran the full night as if the clocks hadn't changed, but in fact there were very few of them on Saturday nights back then as they were geared more to the workers in the markets like Smithfield, and the newspaper industry, most of which had Saturday night off, rather than for clubbers
 

dk1

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For those railway staff with rostered Saturday night turns, the October clock change gives an hour less to work, whereas of course in March there is an extra hour. Rarely (in my workplace) did the same people get both !
From what I remember (I haven’t done nights since 2010) when the clocks go back we got an hours overtime. When the clocks go forward it’s just written off so nobody loses anything.
 

Bill57p9

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For those railway staff with rostered Saturday night turns, the October clock change gives an hour less to work, whereas of course in March there is an extra hour. Rarely (in my workplace) did the same people get both !
Surely it is the other way around.
What happens with things like the tube where people touch in at one time and touch out at an earlier time than when they touched in.
Any half decent software will run in UTC (=GMT) and then offer local time "presentation" at point of display to avoid such issues.
There are very good reasons why aviation uses UTC globally.
 

SickyNicky

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Any half decent software will run in UTC (=GMT) and then offer local time "presentation" at point of display to avoid such issues.
There are very good reasons why aviation uses UTC globally.
Railway time data is not in UTC. It's given to us in "HHmm" format with no acknowledgment of any daylight savings time. So either we have to attempt to do a conversion to UTC at the point of import (which is challenging in the autumn), or to work with it as is, ignoring clocks changing altogether. It's not ideal either way.
 

jopsuk

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2. What would be the effect on the railway if the UK were to unilaterally stop changing the clocks? It may affect Eurostar but any other stuff?
It seems to have been kicked into the long grass again, but it is more likely (in my opinion) that EU will stop changing clocks before the UK does now.
 

Grumbler

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It seems to have been kicked into the long grass again, but it is more likely (in my opinion) that EU will stop changing clocks before the UK does now.
The biennial clock change should be scrapped IMHO. It causes confusion with overnight services (particularly international flights), also countries change their clocks on different dates. Better to simply adjust timetables according to demand. Working hours tend to be flexible these days, so people tend to travel earlier during the summer.
 

Bill57p9

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Railway time data is not in UTC. It's given to us in "HHmm" format with no acknowledgment of any daylight savings time. So either we have to attempt to do a conversion to UTC at the point of import (which is challenging in the autumn), or to work with it as is, ignoring clocks changing altogether. It's not ideal either way.
Being a bit of a software geek, that does interest (and slightly disappoint) me. I work in aviation and whilst schedules are obviously in local time, flight plans are all in UTC to avoid daylight saving and timezone border issues. Obviously there are vastly fewer such edge cases in UK railways but we do have Eurostar and a small number of trains that run during the daylight saving change. Having two 0130s 31 Oct 2021 is asking for trouble.
 

DelW

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The biennial clock change should be scrapped IMHO. It causes confusion with overnight services (particularly international flights), also countries change their clocks on different dates. Better to simply adjust timetables according to demand. Working hours tend to be flexible these days, so people tend to travel earlier during the summer.
You may not be old enough to remember that this was actually done in the late 1960s, when summer time was retained all year round, called British Standard Time.

It was intended as a permanent change, but it proved very unpopular everywhere other than southern England, and was abandoned and time changes were reinstated after very few years.
 

SickyNicky

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Being a bit of a software geek, that does interest (and slightly disappoint) me. I work in aviation and whilst schedules are obviously in local time, flight plans are all in UTC to avoid daylight saving and timezone border issues. Obviously there are vastly fewer such edge cases in UK railways but we do have Eurostar and a small number of trains that run during the daylight saving change. Having two 0130s 31 Oct 2021 is asking for trouble.

Eurostar doesn't count because it's not in the GB rail data. And yes, it's entirely possible from a data perspective to have two trains running at the same "time". I think scheduling is looked at closely to try to avoid this.

As to your interest in the data, we have a role open at FastJP in dev/ops (smile!)
 

MotCO

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I seem to recall that one of the opponents for scrapping daylight saving was Scottish farmers - they would have to get up earlier to milk their cows or something. Surely the cows don't know what time it is, so it doesn't matter when they are milked, provided it is time morning and evenng.
 

dk1

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I’m happy for it to stay as it is forever. Like many in Britain, I don’t embrace change easily.
 

Grumbler

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You may not be old enough to remember that this was actually done in the late 1960s, when summer time was retained all year round, called British Standard Time.

It was intended as a permanent change, but it proved very unpopular everywhere other than southern England, and was abandoned and time changes were reinstated after very few years.
I certainly do remember. The reason it failed was the insistence on adopting summer time, rather than winter (normal) time all year round, as was the case prior to WW1. It was also bad in London, though nowhere as bad as in Scotland. It was made worse by the refusal to adjust business hours according to the season, and flex time was rare. Young children were forced to start off for school in the dark when it was often the coldest time of the day.

There was a parallel with Portugal which reverted to their normal time zone some years after having experimented with putting their clocks forward an hour to keep aligned central Europe.

Personally I would prefer GMT all year round even though I live in East Anglia. But if England were to decide t adopt Central European Time, I see no reason why other parts of the UK could not be an hour different if they prefer. Other countries cope with different time zones with no problems. It is this biennial fiddling with the clocks that cause problems.
 

SickyNicky

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I certainly do remember. The reason it failed was the insistence on adopting summer time, rather than winter (normal) time all year round, as was the case prior to WW1. It was also bad in London, though nowhere as bad as in Scotland. It was made worse by the refusal to adjust business hours according to the season, and flex time was rare. Young children were forced to start off for school in the dark when it was often the coldest time of the day.

There was a parallel with Portugal which reverted to their normal time zone some years after having experimented with putting their clocks forward an hour to keep aligned central Europe.

Personally I would prefer GMT all year round even though I live in East Anglia. But if England were to decide t adopt Central European Time, I see no reason why other parts of the UK could not be an hour different if they prefer. Other countries cope with different time zones with no problems. It is this biennial fiddling with the clocks that cause problems.
That would be exciting for developers of journey planners (not to mention for the maintainers of the underlying data).
 
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