Train Numbers

[6Gman]

I also think that many posters here need to consider what we as enthusiasts or spotters might be interested in knowing and what members of the general public are interested in knowing.

Do not assume that because you are interested in head codes the average man in the street is.

30 years ago during a few days in Hampshire my wife quickly learnt the significance of 91, 92 or 93 on the front of a unit!

 

[atillathehunn]

Not sure why this idea was dismissed with "no it serves no purpose" with the implication that we should be lucky with what we have.

If you book a through ticket via Eurostar from, say, Crewe, the train from Crewe to London has a train number similar to the continental system assigned. I can't find any reference to it on the station, but thankfully I know how to identify my train. However, much simpler to get the number from the screen.

Having the correct number should be all I need to verify. I do not need to know the time or even which destination is displayed. I may wish to double check, but this seems reasonable.

 

[physics34]

What free map app are those?

What being over looked in this debate is headcode useless when disprution takes place as now you need to look the CIS as the headcode is meaningless. That's why newer trains have the pattern scrolling on the outside so the can be informed better.

A headcode won't change when things do so won't provide any info to any member of the public. This idea that putting the 08xx Waterloo to Waterloo service is cancelled is because it feeds the free apps the TOCs direct to (where the system is real time) so get the info feed to you where you need it most, ie at your stop.

Let's not forget the use of headcodes on HS1 had changed as Southeastern used to put headcodes the HS1 stations (certainly as St Pancras) but we're removed as no-one used them.

SOrry its not free....., £10 a year, www.sussextrains.co.uk ..and sorry its works on the internet rather than being a standalone app.

 

[Temple Meads]

The First Great Western network timetable includes headcodes. Not sure if they will keep it going as GWR though.

 

[fowler9]

I think giving a train a certain number would be helpful to some people. I used to work with a girl who used public transport very infrequently. She was not from Liverpool and was getting the train to Chesterfield. She asked me all kinds of questions including "Will it say Chesterfield on the front". I had to tell that it wouldn't. I tried to explain that at Lime Street she could see where it stopped but this caused more panic. I ended up walking her from work down to Lime Street and putting her on the train. If she had a specific train number she had to catch this may have helped.

 

[John1975]

SOrry its not free....., £10 a year, www.sussextrains.co.uk ..and sorry its works on the internet rather than being a standalone app.

Open Train Times is free, though.

 

[superalbs]

The First Great Western network timetable includes headcodes. Not sure if they will keep it going as GWR though.

With the 'GWR Guide to Services' I got from the GWR memory stick I was given, the headcodes are indeed there.

 

[Class377/5]

Open Train Times is free, though.

SOrry its not free....., £10 a year, www.sussextrains.co.uk ..and sorry its works on the internet rather than being a standalone app.

One point I made and is overlooked is both are useless in disprution when train calling patterns are altered. They know only the base timetable.

So even a seasoned commuter will be unable to use the data to wok out of the train will get them home.

There is no app that shows the data as yet.

 

[hounddog]

Not sure why this idea was dismissed with "no it serves no purpose" with the implication that we should be lucky with what we have.

Because that's the standard large-industry response (by no means confined to railways) to any suggested change.

 

[glbotu]

I must admit, travelling around Europe, using the train number to identify your train seems pretty common. Guards/Station Staff will tell you to get train XXXX from Platform Y as well as the time it departs, rather than just time and platform.

It makes it very clear what is your train, especially with reserved seats/tickets etc (which normally have the train number on them).

I feel that SE HighSpeed was a poor testing ground, because it's effectively a 4tph commuter service. Commuters don't need more information. They know what train to get, because they get it every day. This would, however, be useful for intercity and regional services.

Notably in Europe, most commuter services are run as S-Bahns which don't display the train number, because they have a consistent stopping pattern, no reservations, high frequency etc. The usefulness comes when rocking up to somewhere like Brussels Zuid, Amsterdam Centraal or Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and knowing you need to get a specific train to another European city, or a regional train that only runs once an hour. That's when train numbers come into their own (much like flight numbers - because it's easy to recognise a single piece of information, rather than looking through a long list).

 

[coppercapped]

Another reason why train numbers are useful on the continent for medium and long distance trains is that, in Germany at least, not all the stopping places are listed on the platform displays. For example at München an InterCity going to, say, Dortmund would have the first stop listed and then the major stations, so the stops would be shown as 'Augsburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Köln, Dusseldorf" (from memory so this might not be quite accurate).

However the train also stops at Ulm, between Augsburg and Stuttgart, and later also at Koblenz, Bonn and Duisburg.

Until I cracked the train number concept, the first time I went to Ulm from München Hbf (for a job interview) I was a couple of hours late because I couldn't find a train which stopped there! (In the event it was all OK - I landed the job!) Unless you had a printed timetable (this was some years ago!) you wouldn't know all the stops. Even now not all the stopping points are regularly shown on the platform displays or the abbreviated departure sheets, so the train number is important.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Do any retail codes have numbers lower than 2400? If so then there could be confusion between a 24 hour departure time and the code.

Plenty of examples of RSIDs lower than 2400. Looking at London Victoria between 0001 and 0100 today, for example (ignoring trains with an RSID greater than 2400):

• 0002 to Gatwick Airport GX0503
• 0007 to Ramsgate SE0755
• 0014 to Gatwick Airport SN0468
• 0023 to Ashford International SE0501
• 0032 to Gatwick Airport GX0504
• 0037 to Gillingham (Kent) SE0756
• 0042 to East Croydon SN0742

Fenchurch Street is even easier for Down departures. The 0001 to Shoeburyness is CC0000, the 0015 to Grays is CC0002, and then it increments by 1 for each subsequent train, with the 2350 to Shoeburyness being CC0171. In the Up direction, numbering starts from CC1000.

 

[tsr]

One point I made and is overlooked is both are useless in disprution when train calling patterns are altered. They know only the base timetable.

So even a seasoned commuter will be unable to use the data to wok out of the train will get them home.

There is no app that shows the data as yet.

Yep, these websites are pretty good for enthusiasts who want to track a particular service across the network, or for staff [plenty use these sites, including various Control Points] who want to know exactly where a service is rather than looking at a departure board summary, but it's sometimes useless for the average passenger who cannot differentiate between the "should be" world of headcodes and schedules, and the operational decisions made for those services at every given point.

One big problem recently in my part of the world is that Southern Control seem to be doing more and more set swaps (something which in my extensive experience, up until a few months ago, was much less prominent than it is now) at major stations. This can result in websites such as OpenTrainTimes, RTT etc. showing the platform for the old train and not the new one. Therefore you get passengers boarding trains which are about to be taken out of service thinking they're beating the system. It's a real nuisance overall, but it is somewhat of the railway's own making as the "official" apps can be so poor (no platform numbers for ages due to supposed upgrades, slow software performance, and so on), and anyway, who is to blame a passenger who wishes to get a seat first?

I'm not sure how numbering trains would actually solve any of this as you'd probably end up with an added layer of confusion when trains are swapped around or not allocated, or during the frequent instances when displays on trains and at stations don't quite match up with reality. The only foolproof way would be to ensure every service has a unique code for the day and that there was multiple redundancy to ensure it is always displayed prominently on all parts of the trains, but I should imagine that would be costly and unwieldy.