Train numbers should be displayed in public timetables and information systems

[Surreytraveller]

Before privatisation, at a station where you had fast and stopping trains to the same destination, the stopper was shown as going to an intermediate station. For example, at Gatwick, stoppers to Victoria were shown as terminating at Clapham Junction, with only the expresses shown as going through to Victoria. Of course, this wouldn't work these days with cheaper tickets for the slower trains (or it would work, but would just cause a different sort of confusion)

 

[Ken H]

Before privatisation, at a station where you had fast and stopping trains to the same destination, the stopper was shown as going to an intermediate station. For example, at Gatwick, stoppers to Victoria were shown as terminating at Clapham Junction, with only the expresses shown as going through to Victoria. Of course, this wouldn't work these days with cheaper tickets for the slower trains (or it would work, but would just cause a different sort of confusion)

Leeds - York via Harrogate trains were always shown as going to Poppleton on Leeds stn. Dunno if thats still true.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Leeds - York via Harrogate trains were always shown as going to Poppleton on Leeds stn. Dunno if thats still true.

Yes, you still get that, and it confused the life out of me when I needed to use one of those trains and couldn't work out if it was the right one. It's a mind-numbingly stupid idea; better to have train classifications so if there's an IC to your stop you know it's quicker than the RE.

We aren't the only ones at it, though. Don't know if it's the case, but the ICs that DB operate (or used to) from Hamburg to Muenchen via Koeln show as something like "Hagen-Wuppertal Essen-Duesseldorf KOELN-KOBLENZ" at Hamburg, which is confusing if you intended to use it for some reason e.g. a cheap "Advance" (Sparpreis).

The only time it makes sense is where you have "useless" circulars like Merseyrail operating Chester to Chester via Liverpool, in which case it makes sense to advertise as Liverpool Central, as this is the last station you wouldn't be calling at for a second time if you took it. However, at least some of these do actually show as Chester on the PIS at Chester - there's a photo on another thread.

 

[DavidGrain]

Chiltern DMUs do show route numbers on their destination boards but they don't mean anything to me and probably not to most passengers either.

I believe Southern Region trains used to signify Charing Cross or Canon Street with odd and even numbers.

My local station is on the Stourbridge Line. From Platform 1 I can get a train with a final destination of Leamington Spa, Dorridge, Whitlocks End (wherever that is), Stratford upon Avon via Dorridge, Stratford upon Avon via Whitlocks End or in the morning peak London Marylebone. Some trains stop at Langley Green and some don't. These trains could have started from Stourbridge Junction, Kidderminster, Worcester Shrub Hill, Worcester Foregate Street, Great Malvern or Hereford. Do I care? No I just get on the next train and get off at Birmingham Snow Hill or Birmingham Moor Street. I don't need to remember something like 20 or more route numbers.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

There used to be posters on the down platform at New Malden indicating which route numbers were Hampton Court, Shepperton, or Kingston loop services. I think it even described where to look on the front of the train for the number: in the centre of the gangway on slammers, on the destination blind on "sliding-door" trains (455s).

Loop services were advertised as Strawberry Hill IIRC.

 

[apk55]

Manchester Metrolink trams have nice clear signs on the outside (both front and side) showing the destination so you know you are on the correct tram. Why not do the same on mainline trains.

 

[ashkeba]

If my regular bus into town is the 37 then I can be pretty confident what stops its going to serve. But a train service can vary from one departure to the next.

A bus service can vary too. There are 37 buses which vary destination and even some vary most of the route, using main roads off-peak with peak services through village centres.

Headcodes on trains, tickets and itineraries seems helpful to me. Most countries seem to do it, which is probably why the UK doesn't!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Manchester Metrolink trams have nice clear signs on the outside (both front and side) showing the destination so you know you are on the correct tram. Why not do the same on mainline trains.

They mostly do. Doesn't tell you the stopping pattern, though.

 

[DavidGrain]

Probably a case of 'We have always done it this way'. It was only in the last years of steam that locos had headcodes and in my opinion looked ugly but that was because I was not used to them. Southern Railway had a complicated arrangement of lamps and disks to show destinations.

Many heritage DMUs/EMUs had no provision for destination boards and it is only modern technology that enables matrix and other display formats on both trains and buses.

 

[edwin_m]

Trent-barton have specially liveried buses for each route. so calverton connection services have black buses. Is there a case for route liveried trains?

That would only work if the train was pretty much exclusively confined to a particular route. Otherwise people would just board the pink train then complain when it went somewhere different. TB and other operators with route-specific liveries have spare vehicles in a neutral livery that can turn up anywhere, so they virtually never have to put a bus with a route-dedicated livery on a different route. But given the complications of train operation I don't think that would work on the railway, except for a few services where the fleet is incompatible with other routes (I see on another thread that EMR are branding their new Corby EMUs as "Electric").

Ironic mentioning TB on this thread, as they have an almost irrational aversion to using route numbers on their buses. But that has probably been discussed on the other thread.

Manchester Metrolink trams have nice clear signs on the outside (both front and side) showing the destination so you know you are on the correct tram. Why not do the same on mainline trains.

They also change during the journey to stay relevant, for example "Via Market Street" disappears when the tram has passed that stop.

They mostly do. Doesn't tell you the stopping pattern, though.

You get the stopping pattern on the platform and interior displays, where people have a bit more time to study them. Southern have larger side displays on their Electrostars, which display useful information particularly for trains that split en route.

 

[sheff1]

On the contrary I have found it very useful particularly when trying to book seats at a foreign booking office where the booking clerk's English might not be very good or non existent. The train number written down to show the booking clerk is very useful in these circumstances.

Equally useful in countries where departure screens show the destinations in the local script but the train numbers are as they would be at home (if we used them) - http://flipfloppeople.com/Train-Station-22 (image shows departure screen at Sofia)

 

[sheff1]

We aren't the only ones at it, though. Don't know if it's the case, but the ICs that DB operate (or used to) from Hamburg to Muenchen via Koeln show as something like "Hagen-Wuppertal Essen-Duesseldorf KOELN-KOBLENZ" at Hamburg, which is confusing if you intended to use it for some reason e.g. a cheap "Advance" (Sparpreis).

But not at all confusing if you look for train number IC123 - which will be shown on your ticket alongside reserved seat details.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But not at all confusing if you look for train number IC123 - which will be shown on your ticket alongside reserved seat details.

Very true. Though back in the 90s the station PIS didn't show the train number, just "IC mit Zuschlag" (InterCity train with supplementary fare). You'd have to look it up on the yellow posters.

 

[sheff1]

Very true. Though back in the 90s the station PIS didn't show the train number, just "IC mit Zuschlag" (InterCity train with supplementary fare). You'd have to look it up on the yellow posters.

Ah, I don't remember that. Glad they changed it.

 

[30907]

Many heritage DMUs/EMUs had no provision for destination boards

Can't think of any that had neither destination blinds nor headcode panels.

Back to train numbers - I've just been in DE/AT/CZ/SK and while the train category (IC/R/Os...) and the route number (Ex3, S61...) are clearly important the individual number seems less so.

 

[Dr_Paul]

As a couple of people have said already, the Southern Region used two-digit headcodes. Having always lived in the Southern area, I can confirm that they constituted a clear and easily-remembered system, with the code prominently displayed on the front end of the EMU. There were sufficient number combinations to ensure that there was no duplication even thought there were many different routes. If you were on platform 11 at Clapham Junction, 18 was all stations to Chessington South; 24 was all stations (except Earlsfield, until the 1980s) to Shepperton; 21 was all stations round the Kingston loop via Kingston and Richmond (32 was the other way), and so on.

 

[bb21]

Topic done to death before and always the same arguments for and against. Just have a search of old threads.

 

[theblackwatch]

So i havent got a clue about geography and I have a reservation on a train to Birmingham. I look at the PIS, and there are trains to southampton, taunton and exeter. If my reservation said 1W23 and the PIS said 1W23 there would be no confusion. Airlines use numbers, not times and destinations.

That is a very good point, and not something that crossed my mind until a few years back when I was coming back from London with a work colleague who has probably never travelled on a train by himself.

We arrived at King's Cross and I gave a cursory glance at the screen and saw what platform our train back to York, a Newcastle or Edinburgh service, was going from. "How do you know that's our train?" he said, to which I thought it was blatantly obvious! But when there are many trains, some departing to different destinations, it isn't obvious to everyone - not all passengers have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rail network. If their ticket said 'Train 1A16' on it, then I'm sure it would be a help to some. Or perhaps many other European countries have just got it wrong...

 

[StephenHunter]

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #9 originally in this thread

It would be nice to have them displayed on passenger information displays.

 

[Eloise]

It would be nice to have them displayed on passenger information displays.

Why? To 99.99% of the travelling public it means nothing.

 

[Journeyman]

It would be nice to have them displayed on passenger information displays.

It would just cause confusion. They've never been used for public identification of trains.

 

[43096]

It would just cause confusion. They've never been used for public identification of trains.

Why would it cause confusion? They seem to manage perfectly well in Europe publishing such information, and we cope with flight numbers in an airport, often with more than one flight number for a single flight.

Surely another means of identifying a particular service rather than just departure time is a good thing, especially as "booked train only" tickets become the norm.

 

[Merle Haggard]

It would be nice to have them displayed on passenger information displays.

Not quite the same, but aren't they shown on the displays by the doors on Pendolino trains?

 

[SuspectUsual]

Not quite the same, but aren't they shown on the displays by the doors on Pendolino trains?

They’re “train numbers” or something, not a reporting number

 

[I13]

They’re “train numbers” or something, not a reporting number

These days they often show the headcode.

 

[Tom]

Why? To 99.99% of the travelling public it means nothing.

It means nothing now because we barely use them publicly. I have noticed that savvy travellers are becoming much more adept with knowing the headcodes though prior to the downturn in traffic there was a steady increase in the use of them on social media. I think that this is a perfectly reasonable barometer to know whether they're such a challenge to use.

This industry suffers from so many different numbering systems to identify essentially the same thing, from the train identity (headcode), the headcode (different in scheduling world, of course), the schedule UID, the Retail Service ID, etc. It feels to me that the only reason why we don't use an identity to represent services to the passenger is because of how many there are. It would probably be quite effective to use them on long distance services where reserved seats are the norm - after all Eurostar manage that absolutely fine and even use them in social media comms.

They’re “train numbers” or something, not a reporting number

In my recent experience, while they used to show the Retail Service ID they do tend to show the headcode now prefixed with VT.

 

[Journeyman]

Why would it cause confusion? They seem to manage perfectly well in Europe publishing such information, and we cope with flight numbers in an airport, often with more than one flight number for a single flight.

Surely another means of identifying a particular service rather than just departure time is a good thing, especially as "booked train only" tickets become the norm.

Set up a train number system, then - but it'll only be of any use if displayed on the train. Just don't use headcodes, because it's not what they're meant for, and it's only enthusiasts that care about what they are.

 

[ainsworth74]

Set up a train number system, then - but it'll only be of any use if displayed on the train. Just don't use headcodes, because it's not what they're meant for, and it's only enthusiasts that care about what they are.

Thankfully such a system already exists (or at least did!!). It used to show up in RTT actually (something along the lines of Retail Service ID or similar) but each reservable train was assigned it's own unique identifier. Perfect for "booked train only" tickets.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thankfully such a system already exists (or at least did!!). It used to show up in RTT actually (something along the lines of Retail Service ID or similar) but each reservable train was assigned it's own unique identifier. Perfect for "booked train only" tickets.

Yes, it's Retail Service ID. The only place you see it displayed to the public is on Voyager external displays. Pendolinos used to display it but do actually now display the headcode!

I agree it should appear all over the place, as this "flight number" would remove ambiguity regarding Advances, and people are used to the idea of "flight numbers".

For some reason RTT indeed seem no longer to show it.

Edit: I wonder if it's been dropped entirely? The XML view on Tiger has a field for it (RetailID=) but they are all blank, e.g. on:

http://iris2.rail.co.uk/tiger/304021.xml

 

[bramling]

Mod Note: Posts #1 - #9 originally in this thread

It would be nice to have them displayed on passenger information displays.

I can’t really see the news. In times past when information systems were less widespread there was some justification for this (like the old SR route numbers), but now there just isn’t much need.

Anyone who wants to know has plenty of online resources they can refer to.