East Coast 2330 King's Cross-Leeds 40 minute delay

[Welshman]

I'm old enough to remember when those headcodes were either pasted on boards attached to the lamp brackets of steam locos or in the front windows of diesel engines and dmus!
Then new designs incorporated headcode display boxes, but the decision was then taken not to display them and the boxes were blanked-out or the display permanently replaced with two white dots or something like OOOO.
I've often wondered why that decision was taken. Was it "too much information for the passenger?" or am I being paranoid?
As they are still obviously used internally, why can't they be publicly used again? For example, a XC train at Edinburgh simply stating "Plymouth" on the destination indicator is not much help if I'm wanting to go to Derby or Birmingham. And when trains are running out of course, you cannot always depend on PIS systems getting it right!

AFAIK EC is the only company which acknowledges and displays the codes in their timetables. Why are they not more widely used publicly as an additional means of identifying a train?

 

[jopsuk]

because they're of very little use to anyone but spotters really. That train at Edinburgh? There are multiple screens along the platform listing all destinations, and even screens on the trains doing the same. Displaying the headcode is less use than displaying the final destination- it makes more sense when (say) a passenger asks a member of staff which train to get for Derby to say "the Plymouth train" rather than give them a seemingly arbitary code. If headcodes were to be displayed, they would need to be in addtion to, not as well as, destination displays. Modern units would need to be redesigned to take them- though some units in the south still carry Southern (the ex region/Big Four area, not the TOC) two-digit route numbers I think.

Headcode displays were primarily for signallers as I understand it. They were removed in, what, the mid/late seventies? HSTs were designed without headcode boxes.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Yes, with the spread of modern signalling systems which display the headcodes on a panel or screen in the signalbox ( and, increasingly, in a control centre from which you cannot even see the railway! ) the visual display of the headcodes on the train became redundant.

I seem to recall that for a while they did have the headcodes on the roller blinds above the secondman's side on the 315s when they were new.

 

[Aictos]

I seem to recall that for a while they did have the headcodes on the roller blinds above the secondman's side on the 315s when they were new.

As well as the 313s, just look on Google and there's photos galore which show they used to have a roller blind above the secondman's side which displayed the train's headcode although not has been either filled in or removed.