This is what gets the current rail system a bad name

[Mcr Warrior]

I think this discussion exposes some real deficiencies of the railway system that are a bit OT to this thread, but basically they are trying to fit more trains onto a network than it is capable of operating when conditions are less than ideal. That creates over-tight timing clearances at some critical junctions, etc. Add to that the blight caused by delay compensation payments, which is an active encouragement not to hold connections.

Might be the case elsewhere, but as regards what normally happens at Seamer, it's is not exactly busy. Normally four calls per hour. The self-contained Scarborough-York TPE service, and the Scarborough-Bridlington/Sheffield Northern service. That's it!

When connections at Seamer don't work, you're almost guaranteed an hour's delay!

 

[yorkie]

For a start, it would be good if guards kept doors open for a few seconds if there are clearly several passengers running towards the train who've clearly come from another train that's just arrived. It's not rocket-science. That's a completely different scenario from waiting 5/10/15 minutes for a late running train that's nowhere near the station. Closing doors in front of passengers just makes the guard look like a jobsworth.

Not just looks; if a member of staff is following instructions to the letter in the absence of common sense, that is the very definition of one.

I think this discussion exposes some real deficiencies of the railway system that are a bit OT to this thread, but basically they are trying to fit more trains onto a network than it is capable of operating when conditions are less than ideal. That creates over-tight timing clearances at some critical junctions, etc.

I agree there are deficiencies and the more passengers narrowly miss connections, the less confident people are about travelling and the more demands are made for through services, rather than connecting services. But as you allude, any ideas for how to change things to do things differently would be best posted in a new thread.

Add to that the blight caused by delay compensation payments, which is an active encouragement not to hold connections.

I'd argue there is encouragement to hold connections where it is within the same TOC, but not to do so where separate TOCs are involved.

 

[100andthirty]

I'd argue there is encouragement to hold connections where it is within the same TOC, but not to do so where separate TOCs are involved.

With the financial arrangements for the TOCs since Covid, they more or less all contribute to the same fare pot now. But none of this should concern individual guards who should use their common sense. Frankly, given the cost base of the railway, the cost of delay/repay and which TOC pays out is a tiny fraction of the whole, and based on everything I've seen on here, the efforts of some pedants within the TOCs to save pennies on delay-repay payments, costs £s in goodwill.

Another point, in the example described by the OP, the need to hold the doors should have been absolutely obvious to the guard. There are lots of other places where a train would not be in sight of a connecting late arrival. Indeed at busier places, there might be several connecting trains. In these circumstances, control ought to be managing this, sending messages to the signaller to hold trains for a minute or two. It is possible, having watched the controllers in Zurich signal box doing exactly that on a study tour visit a few years back. An opportunity for GBR, perhaps

 

[Moonshot]

Guards should really use some common sense. Some do......some don't.

 

[Fokx]

Guards should really use some common sense. Some do......some don't.

Not worth loosing the job over sadly

 

[miklcct]

In regard of delay, what happening on this thread is really concerning to me:

No.


In that case, an operator-specific ticket won't be suitable for you.


Has it ever occurred to you that this seems to be the root of a lot of the problems you encounter when making journeys?


An interavailable flexible ticket will give you the maximum flexibility, yes.


You need to observe the route and/or company restrictions shown on the ticket; in the case of disruption, you can take the next service complying with these restrictions. In some cases that will be more specific than others, e.g. GWR set a lot of "AP Xtown" Advances, whilst most other operators go for "Y Trains Only".

It is about taking a branch line connection into a mainline long distance advance on a tight connection, in this case, Lumo. However, this is something I frequently do as well in my area, taking an SWR connection into an XC advance when the next train will be an SWR train (or into an SWR advance when the next train will be an XC train).

If I end up getting up a new ticket or penalty fared as a result of the railway's own incompetency, and can't get it overturned, I'll no longer consider any rail travel where a connection into an operator-restricted ticket is needed.

 

[seagull]

I believe those who are acting as apologists for the rail industry work for TOCs

I am not "Labelling rail staff as apologists"

Hopefully these two quotes will let you see how I came to the conclusion that you were, but apologies if (as it seems) I misunderstood.
I should however express my opinion that giving a reason for something is not (always) the same as defending it. I have encountered sales or customer service people in various industries who have given a reason or even a justification for a policy or rule but at the same time have been rather critical of its necessity.
As I would imagine most would be of a train dispatch in the face of passengers attempting to board.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

For a start, it would be good if guards kept doors open for a few seconds if there are clearly several passengers running towards the train who've clearly come from another train that's just arrived. It's not rocket-science. That's a completely different scenario from waiting 5/10/15 minutes for a late running train that's nowhere near the station. Closing doors in front of passengers just makes the guard look like a jobsworth.

But the majority of them do! If effort is being made then holding a train for a matter of seconds is fine. However, I would take offence at being called a jobsworth as that is a term regularly aimed at train crew when simply doing their job.

As already pointed out, there could be any number of reasons why the conductor didn't wait, and only they will really be able to say.

 

[billio]

Might be the case elsewhere, but as regards what normally happens at Seamer, it's is not exactly busy. Normally four calls per hour. The self-contained Scarborough-York TPE service, and the Scarborough-Bridlington/Sheffield Northern service. That's it!

When connections at Seamer don't work, you're almost guaranteed an hour's delay!

Bearing in mind that at Seamer there is nothing for waiting passengers other than uncomfortable seats to perch on in the two bus shelters, no toilets, no shops or other facilities outside the station, one solution to a missed connection would be to advise passengers to stay on the train to Scarborough and make their connection there. At least the hour's wait could be spent in relative comfort at Scarborough station.

 

[trainophile]

Is there any reason why they couldn't simply increase the connection time at Seamer from 5 to 10 minutes? This would build in a bit of delay time, and people wouldn't mind waiting for 10 minutes if the alternative is an hour.

 

[miklcct]

Is there any reason why they couldn't simply increase the connection time at Seamer from 5 to 10 minutes? This would build in a bit of delay time, and people wouldn't mind waiting for 10 minutes if the alternative is an hour.

Every minute added into the travel time decreases the attractiveness of rail compared to other modes of transport.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Seems to me that a York bound TPE service passing a Scarborough bound Northern service in the Seamer area must happen just about each and every hour. It's not exactly an unexpected occurrence!

Ordinarily, the xx35 Northern service towards Scarborough will have already called or still be in station at Seamer when the xx40 TPE train to York arrives.

If, however, the TPE gets a red signal at Seamer, and the Northern service hasn't yet already passed, it's likely that the Northern service is only a few minutes down coming off the Bridlington line and will be arriving at Seamer soon enough.

If it's delayed by more than a few minutes, however, the Northern service is likely to then be held on its approach to Seamer West Junction, and so if the route has then already been set for the TPE service, then and only then would it not be reasonable to maintain the connection.

Is there any reason why they couldn't simply increase the connection time at Seamer from 5 to 10 minutes? This would build in a bit of delay time, and people wouldn't mind waiting for 10 minutes if the alternative is an hour.

Not sure how that helps. Do you mean re-jigging either or both the TPE/Northern timetables rather than amending the Minimum Connection Time at Seamer so that the existing connections no longer show on itineraries?

 

[Bill57p9]

Is the underlying issue here that from a TOC perspective, passengers are service users rather than customers. Any half decent service management course will teach you that it's important to keep the customer happy - but understanding the difference between customers and users is key.

So the TOCs' customer (DfT) want individual trains to be punctual and have placed SLAs appropriate to that goal. But what that hasn't done is provide much of an incentive for TOCs to improve the passenger experience, such as providing an overall quality network.

Obviously passengers are customers because they pay, but (for a TOC) they are the DfTs customer, rather than the TOC's.

 

[Horizon22]

I agree there are deficiencies and the more passengers narrowly miss connections, the less confident people are about travelling and the more demands are made for through services, rather than connecting services. But as you allude, any ideas for how to change things to do things differently would be best posted in a new thread.


I'd argue there is encouragement to hold connections where it is within the same TOC, but not to do so where separate TOCs are involved.

Connections are always tricky - in fact I remember a very lengthy thread a few months back (at Bristol Temple Meads) which went down the same path. I agree there's certainly a difference between a few seconds for some last minute passengers and a few minutes to authorise a hold which would need specific permissions due to the knock-on impacts - as an aside this is why capacity is a big issue and hopefully going forward the pracrtice of trying to timetable to fill as many trains into a peak period just because it can thoretically can be done ends.

When you're talking about margins of seconds, ultimately you are then taking it into every individual guard/train manager/driver to make a judgment call which they will be doing multiple times on each trip, replicated over thousands of journeys across the country with lots of different squidgy humans making decisions. Some people are jobsworths, and there is no way way the industry will be able to monitor this everywhere. Whilst some people are excellent and will wait a bit longer for some people. And others go too far and stop the job and overreach their authority to hold trains, delay passengers of the connecting train (who may have their own connections).

I would agree that intra-TOC connections are generally far better than inter-TOC connections, and should be resolved where possible. But I can see how one TOC might not want to experience a delay that could mount up for something they may not have even known about, let alone been completely devoid of blame for. This is when local knowledge needs to come in to make sensible policies and an understanding of common flows. For most places this will be the same TOC, but at bigger cities and interchanges (not Seamer!) it because difficult to handle everything.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Mar 2022 ==

An apologist is someone who defends something that is unpopular; in this case it is clear that popular opinion would be for the passengers to have been able to make the connection.

Although you could argue that your view is "populist" by saying that popular opinion should suffice, never mind the complexities, realities and potential knock-on impacts!

There are lots of unpopular things that have to be defended because of a variety of factors, circumstances or restrictions that, for instance, might be out of the control of the people performing an action. Not saying this is necessarily one. Taken as the very absolute issue (a few people striving to make a connection, which will take 15-30 secs) then no, but wider than that the line must somewhere be drawn and where is that? There are performance systems now that ask for input with a delay reason that are as low as 20 seconds from RT (right time).

Edit: found the previous thread (linked above)

 

[trainophile]

Not sure how that helps. Do you mean re-jigging either or both the TPE/Northern timetables rather than amending the Minimum Connection Time at Seamer so that the existing connections no longer show on itineraries?

If the Sheffield trains started from Scarborough five minutes earlier, and/or the York trains five minutes later, wouldn't that achieve a longer connection time at Seamer? I don't know now, struggling to get my head around it .

 

[yorkie]

If the Sheffield trains started from Scarborough five minutes earlier, and/or the York trains five minutes later, wouldn't that achieve a longer connection time at Seamer? I don't know now, struggling to get my head around it .

If anyone has any suggestions for changes to service provision, please post these in the Speculative Discussion area, thanks

 

[zero]

Bearing in mind that at Seamer there is nothing for waiting passengers other than uncomfortable seats to perch on in the two bus shelters, no toilets, no shops or other facilities outside the station, one solution to a missed connection would be to advise passengers to stay on the train to Scarborough and make their connection there. At least the hour's wait could be spent in relative comfort at Scarborough station.

Yes, I agree going to Scarborough would be a sensible option, but it's not completely true that there's nothing nearby. I see on Google Maps that there is a pub and takeaways 5 minutes walk away. There is also a Morrisons, Costa and McDonald's 10 minutes walk away, the latter appearing to be open at all times one could be changing trains there, though not so easy to get to with luggage or limited mobility, and of course requires you to have researched this in advance or have internet access on a device to find out about them.

 

[bramling]

Is the underlying issue here that from a TOC perspective, passengers are service users rather than customers. Any half decent service management course will teach you that it's important to keep the customer happy - but understanding the difference between customers and users is key.

So the TOCs' customer (DfT) want individual trains to be punctual and have placed SLAs appropriate to that goal. But what that hasn't done is provide much of an incentive for TOCs to improve the passenger experience, such as providing an overall quality network.

Obviously passengers are customers because they pay, but (for a TOC) they are the DfTs customer, rather than the TOC's.

I’d say the problem is more that the operational side of the railway has a tendency to employ poor calibre management, which in turn feeds bad practices and attitudes through to the front-line.

There’s no specific discipline as such, which in turn means people appear who have little interest in and understanding of how things work, and no real incentive or means to find out. Very good at implementing measures like scripted announcements, not so good at delivering what actually matters to the end user. By constant, if one looks at the engineering functions, in general it takes a lengthy period of work and commitment to reach a position which has decision-implementing capability.

I remember a signal engineer on LU moaning that they had spent a lot of money installing a signal at a given location in order to meet the required service interval, then found the operational management were actively telling drivers to “wait until you see the next signal clear before you depart the platform, less chance of having a SPAD”, thus completely negating the change they had made.

This culture is unlikely to change, and for as long as it’s the case we will see situations like guards shutting doors in peoples faces because they don’t want to run any risk of having their collar felt, and a management who won’t back them up. Empowered staff are likely to perform better and be more end-user-friendly than when treated as a mere button pusher, however some managements are scared of empowering staff in this way as it exposes their own weakness.

 

[al78]

An apologist is someone who defends something that is unpopular; in this case it is clear that popular opinion would be for the passengers to have been able to make the connection.

Is that really the definition? I thought it was someone who tries to defend the unjustifiable. Just because a decision or view is unpopular, doesn't automatically make it wrong in the logical sense at least.

Having read this thread there seems to be three issues at play:

1. It is wrong from a human welfare perspective to leave people stuck for a long time at stations with little to no facilities because they were seconds late due to a delay for which they were not at fault.

2. The railway in many places runs at very close to full capacity and is a very tightly run system. It works brilliantly when everything goes according to plan, but the lack of slack in the system means that even a small perturbation can grow over time to the point it has significant negative consequences. Holding trains for connections can be such a perturbation.

3. Railway employees on the front line are tramlined by regulations and there can be serious consequences if they choose to deviate from those regulations, particularly if doing so causes negative side effects.

It is tempting in these situations to leap on 1. but I can see in reality it is more complicated than that. If the timings are so tight that 30-60 seconds delay is likely to cause a ripple effect that leads to worse delays for more people later on, it can be hard to justify holding a train for a few people, because that would be like judging their journey is more important than many more other people's journeys. It seems to me it should be done wherever possible but there will be situations where it should not be done.

 

[yorkie]

Is that really the definition? I thought it was someone who tries to defend the unjustifiable. Just because a decision or view is unpopular, doesn't automatically make it wrong in the logical sense at least.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/apologist

a person who supports a particular belief ... especially an unpopular one, and speaks or writes in defence of it...

Having read this thread there seems to be three issues at play:

1. It is wrong from a human welfare perspective to leave people stuck for a long time at stations with little to no facilities because they were seconds late due to a delay for which they were not at fault.

I don't disagree with the princople but to be honest this is difficult to argue over a 1 hour delay, except in extremely poor weather conditions.

2. The railway in many places runs at very close to full capacity and is a very tightly run system. It works brilliantly when everything goes according to plan, but the lack of slack in the system means that even a small perturbation can grow over time to the point it has significant negative consequences. Holding trains for connections can be such a perturbation.

I refer you to posts above; holding the train for a few more seconds would not have caused any delay further down the line; others have explained this.

3. Railway employees on the front line are tramlined by regulations and there can be serious consequences if they choose to deviate from those regulations, particularly if doing so causes negative side effects.

It is tempting in these situations to leap on 1. but I can see in reality it is more complicated than that. If the timings are so tight that 30-60 seconds delay is likely to cause a ripple effect that leads to worse delays for more people later on, it can be hard to justify holding a train for a few people, because that would be like judging their journey is more important than many more other people's journeys. It seems to me it should be done wherever possible but there will be situations where it should not be done.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that trains should always wait, are they?!

 

[800001]

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/apologist


I don't disagree with the princople but to be honest this is difficult to argue over a 1 hour delay, except in extremely poor weather conditions.

I refer you to posts above; holding the train for a few more seconds would not have caused any delay further down the line; others have explained this.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that trains should always wait, are they?!

The TPE arrived at York, 3/4 of a minute late.
If it had been held to allow the northern passengers to join, it would of been 1-2 or even more minutes late arriving into York.
York is an 8 minute connection station.
TPE arriving later would potentially of made numerous people miss there connections through no fault of there own, but hey not to worry, the 2 or 3 passengers of the northern service got to York ok.

 

[jfowkes]

If timings are this critical over the network, how are passengers in wheelchairs handled? Deploying a ramp, getting person on, taking ramp off, then the same again at destination... That can easily add a minute or two.

 

[yorkie]

The TPE arrived at York, 3/4 of a minute late.

It had a bit of dwell time at Malton and also took 9 3/4 minutes from Strensall Sb to York (but it's only 7 minutes in the other direction!)

Here is the train so people can check it out for themselves:

Realtime Trains | 1234 Scarborough to York | 04/03/2022

Real-time train running information for 1234 departure from Scarborough to York on 04/03/2022. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

If it had been held to allow the northern passengers to join, it would of been 1-2 or even more minutes late arriving into York.
York is an 8 minute connection station.

It would have likely been on time into York; it looks like it had to wait for the train from York to depart and clear the section, so if it had been a bit late approaching York, would have been straight in, without waiting for the signal (if the full dwell time at Malton was required).

TPE arriving later would potentially of made numerous people miss there connections through no fault of there own, but hey not to worry, the 2 or 3 passengers of the northern service got to York ok.

There is no evidence it would have made anyone miss connections; as it was, people did miss connections.

 

[ChrisC]

Bearing in mind that at Seamer there is nothing for waiting passengers other than uncomfortable seats to perch on in the two bus shelters, no toilets, no shops or other facilities outside the station, one solution to a missed connection would be to advise passengers to stay on the train to Scarborough and make their connection there. At least the hour's wait could be spent in relative comfort at Scarborough station.

If you know that the connection has been missed, staying on the train to Scarborough would be the best thing to do. However, in this case the connecting train to York should not have been missed as it was standing in the adjacent platform, a few feet away with doors open. Whatever some people may think passengers should not have the doors closed in their faces as they hurry across the platform. Passengers would not remain on the train to Scarborough if the connecting train appeared to be still there waiting. Closing the doors as people approach just appears to the passengers as deliberate rudeness to put it mildly.

 

[Bertie the bus]

If timings are this critical over the network, how are passengers in wheelchairs handled? Deploying a ramp, getting person on, taking ramp off, then the same again at destination... That can easily add a minute or two.

The old story of how connections can't be held because of knock-on effects is always trotted out on threads like this. It might be credible if the railway normally ran at 99% or 100% punctuality but it is nowhere near that so if routine delays every day don't cause the whole system to collapse how come holding a train for a few seconds would?

 

[yorkie]

This thread shows how deep the problem is, and that things are unlikely to change.

Some people seem absolutely desperate to argue that the train in question (the 1234 Scarborough to York) should not have waited a few seconds, even though it clearly had to wait outside York for its path to become available, and I find that really disappointing, albeit - and it saddens me to say this - not actually surprising

 

[LittleAH]

Still, never mind, once TPE return to running Scarborough trains through to and from Liverpool there should be enough delays for them to be able to start turning trains round at York and Malton again so missed connections at Seamer will be the least of our worries!

Good thing it'll only be Manchester then as Liverpool services will now go to Hull from Dec 22 all being well.

There is no evidence it would have made anyone miss connections; as it was, people did miss connections.

Had a train which was held for a late running service to connect with a while back. Fair enough you may say as it was the last service of the day. But then some on my service missed their last connections at Leeds and had to get taxis home. Reality of the situation is there will always be two sides to the coin.

Closing the doors as people approach just appears to the passengers as deliberate rudeness to put it mildly.

This is nonsense. Trains run to a timetable. If people are not there on time, then the train must go.

 

[Huntergreed]

I find it increasingly disappointing and worrying how the attitude towards railway punctuality often becomes prioritised over the conviencence of the passenger. This is just one of countless examples I have experienced or have heard about.

I can't count the times I've got off a pendolino which was around 5 minutes late at Carlisle (which had many passengers heading for the Dumfries train onboard) when they've decided to send the train to Dumfries (where it terminates, so no risk of any delay to other services) in front of the pendolino, meaning:

1) All passengers on the 390 who were due to join the Dumfries train are no longer able to

2) The 390 ends up with a further delay as the Dumfries 156 has a maximum speed 50mph below that of the 390

and

3) The railway disappoints many passengers who I'm sure would happily consider driving in future to save a 2 hour wait in Carlisle on a cold night.

The railway philosophy hierarchy of Safety, Punctuality, Revenue needs to change to Safety, Convenience/Customer Service, Punctuality, Revenue.

If we are seriously at a stage where we are refusing to hold a train at a small station (which terminates at a major station without any movement onto a major mainline (yes I know York is on the ECML, but the Scarborough services seem to terminate at the point on P3 before the ECML is able to access the southern end of the platform), then we have a massive problem.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Mar 2022 ==

This is nonsense. Trains run to a timetable. If people are not there on time, then the train must go.

I disagree, if it is clear passengers are intending to board a train (especially if it's on an infrequent line) then it's simply bad customer service on behalf of the railway to deny them access for the purpose of punctuality (especially on a service like the one mentioned by the OP where the risk of residual delay is minimal)

 

[Horizon22]

If we are seriously at a stage where we are refusing to hold a train at a small station (which terminates at a major station without any movement onto a major mainline (yes I know York is on the ECML, but the Scarborough services seem to terminate at the point on P3 before the ECML is able to access the southern end of the platform), then we have a massive problem.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Mar 2022 ==


I disagree, if it is clear passengers are intending to board a train (especially if it's on an infrequent line) then it's simply bad customer service on behalf of the railway to deny them access for the purpose of punctuality (especially on a service like the one mentioned by the OP where the risk of residual delay is minimal)

I think you're looking a lot into this. When you say "we" you seem to be referring to everywhere, which is quite broad brush. Many TOC have connectional policies. I've seen plenty of trains tick over 30-60 seconds or so waiting for connections for people evidently trying to make them. Trains dwell at busy stations all the time. And again, some conscientious people will look out for that. The focus will always be on the departure time and ensuring the safe departure. Here you'd hope common sense would prevail, and connections are something that are perhaps not held as dear as pre-privatisation but a line would need to be drawn at some point. Trying to do this is so varied and dependent on lateness, the connection types, the loadings, the station facilities, the number of people seeking to make the connection etc. As I said previously, local experience is useful here which you would hope crew would have, but ultimately we will probably never know why this guard didn't wait. Did they not care? Did they actually see the passengers? Had they already completed dispatch and the doors were already closing? Were they focussing solely on safety? Did they apologise to the passengers? Were they ensuring a right time departure? Were they worried about explaining any potential delay? There's a lot to consider and it is impossible to know all the factors.

You mention customer service coming before punctuality, but you know what always comes out #1 in terms of passenger satisfaction for the railway? Punctuality.

I feel this thread could go round and round because ultimately by impacting one person's journey, you impact another's. The same comes when redrawing new timetables; competing pasenger groups often want certain things which may be to the detriment of the other! The impact of that is ultimately a judgment call. Control (or whoever people feel it should be) can in no way monitor every potential missed connection on a busy network. This thread is going pretty much the same way as this topic about holding trains at Bristol (ok the impacts may have been less here), and it's impossible to find an answer everyone agrees on because there are so many ifs and buts and caveats dependent on where you are and when.

 

[LittleAH]

I disagree, if it is clear passengers are intending to board a train (especially if it's on an infrequent line) then it's simply bad customer service on behalf of the railway to deny them access for the purpose of punctuality (especially on a service like the one mentioned by the OP where the risk of residual delay is minimal)

And this is where this will go round in circles. Because its bad customer service to also delay those on a train who are waiting - as cited with my example. A minimal delay to one person, can be a significant delay to another.