Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
The grim reality now is that railway operation is more than ever controlled by a combination of train destination punctuality (rather than overall passenger punctuality), computerised decisions that are not easily over-ridden by humans/reality and timetables that are at least largely geared towards slack timings to allow a minimum risk of financial penalties. Notwithstanding the greater intensity of service now operated, today's railway has so many skewed targets and priorities that it is losing its way regarding passenger priority. A train that is five minutes late should never skip stops (especially with the next being cancelled!) - it's simply farcical.
So you’re suggesting the objective is what, exactly?
And is it just as easy as just turning trains at Teddington? Is it signalled appropriately, is there dispatch equipment etc. and you’re proposing to cut Shepperton off entirely during disruption?
This is degenerating into a very silly thread with wild accusations and speculation from people who clearly aren’t in a position to know the operational issues.
Yes, you can reverse at Teddington: both the east and south curves at Shacklegate have reversing facilities, as OTT Maps will confirm) or you could use a siding at Strwaberry hill depot.
As I said, I have only seen the way disruption is handledfrom the victims passenger's side, but after 27 years as an interested observer I think I have a reasonabvle idea of what operational decisions work and which are simply crass. (terminating a morning peak Shepperton to Waterloo service at Kingston when the next rounder is short-formed comes high up that list..............)
And of course cutting a service on the Shepperton branch is not ideal, but, as the ORR stats reveal, cutting off Teddington, Hampton Wick, Kingston and Norbiton affects four times as many people. (Norbiton alone has larger user stats (both before and after Covid) than the combined total of the six stations on the Shepperton branch, Teddington is not far behind, and Kingston has twice as many as that. To put that into perspective that is like skipping Winchester and Basingstoke and running fast to Millbrook, Redbridge, Lyndhurst Road and Beaulieu Road.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Am I right in thinking that under SWT the Shepperton branch trains interworked with other services at Waterloo rather than self contained (other than at peak times)?
They may have done at one time, but in latter days the Sheps and Rounders were both self-contained. The others (Hampton Court, Woking, Cobham Line, Bookham line, Dorking, Chessington) all interworked
They are booked as 10 but like yesterday lots Weymouth trains cancelled from Waterloo or started from Bournemouth due to the overtime ban bots lots of the ones that did run were 5 cars only.Also in normal circumstances some afternoon trains that leave Waterloo for Weymouth split at Southampton and one portion works as a local stopper to poole however because its short formed it can't be split and the stopper is cancelled this happens almost daily.SWR then put on their website service full and standing from Clapham Junction Really?
Sorry I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make?
You’re correct about short forms due to ASoS and no drivers available to bring stock off depots but as you say that is not the booked working, it’s industrial action. How is that relevant to making it acceptable to running 4 cars on Sheppy services?
Sorry I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make?
You’re correct about short forms due to ASoS and no drivers available to bring stock off depots but as you say that is not the booked working, it’s industrial action. How is that relevant to making it acceptable to running 4 cars on Sheppy services?
Good old Gerry Fiennes was an expert at cutting through operational bull. A mainstream express was regularly delayed by a stopper in front. It was proposed to extend its schedule to reflect actuality. He said NO. "The solution is not to retime the express arrival later. the solution is to Make The Stopper Run To Time. Do it".
The grim reality now is that railway operation is more than ever controlled by a combination of train destination punctuality (rather than overall passenger punctuality), computerised decisions that are not easily over-ridden by humans/reality and timetables that are at least largely geared towards slack timings to allow a minimum risk of financial penalties. Notwithstanding the greater intensity of service now operated, today's railway has so many skewed targets and priorities that it is losing its way regarding passenger priority. A train that is five minutes late should never skip stops (especially with the next being cancelled!) - it's simply farcical.
That's not quite correct. The performance model for passenger trains used to be train destination punctuality. It has since been replaced with overall punctuality based at every station stop (on-time (T-0), 3 mins late (T-3) and 15 mins late (T-15).
The Automatic Lie Generators at Kingston cannot cope with such diversions. I have freqently seen trains scheduled for two hours ago shown as running "on time" - what has actually happened was that it was on time at Fulwell, but was then diverted via Putney. It then gets lost to the PIS system at the omitted stations, which continue to report the train as "on time" long after it has reached Waterloo. No staff ever seem to care about this problem, let alone take the trouble to fix it by over-riding the PIS manually
Aren’t Twitter staff at SWR alongside the route controllers in Basingstoke ROC?
I’m pretty sure if an UP Basingstoke stopper is 5 or more late approaching Woking the plan is for it to run on the fast line to surbiton, not calling at Weybridge or Walton on Thames due to the pathing issues and the knock on delays
If they do sit along side the route controllers, on that perticular morning a message kfchanges didn't reach them. Unusual of course.
When Clapham Junction is skipped from the fast Guildford trains to Waterloo that can be annoying, as off peak, apart from 17:00 to 19:00, the fast service is only hourly ans there isn't any good connections at Woking. Although during disruption you might get lucky.
A similar situation , towards the end of the slammer era, was handled in a very ingenious fashion. The train made a special stop on the fast line at Esher (where there is a disused platform between the fast lines) and passengers for Surbiton were trasferred across that platform to a waiting train that had made a special stop on the up fast. Minimum of delay to all concerned.
It is unprofessional to not heed input from your customers. I have 27 years experience of using their services, and about 12,500 individual journeys, (and they have about £40,000 of my money).
SWR and its predecessors are abusing their monopoly. They know full well that they have us over a barrel - Kingston is the only London borough served by only one rail operator, and now that the Lizzie has reached Abbey Wood it is also the only one with no TfL rail-based services at all (no tram, DLR, Underground or Overground).
They know they can ignore the long-standing campaign for re-zoning - most stations within a 10 miles radius of Charing Cross are in Zone 4, Kingston is in Zone 6! (It would also resolve the anomaly that the fare from Waterloo to Strawberry Hill is different depending on which way round the loop you go)
When I suggested this I was told various feeble excuses:
- rezoning would require co-operation with the other operators in the area (as i said, there are none)
- .... and the TfL buses (TfL buses operate a flat fare, with no zoing, and outside Zone 3 have done so since the 1980s)
- it wouldn't be fair, as they would "have" to increase fares elesewhere to maintain revenue (the idea of, perhaps, reducing their profits seemed incomprehensible to him, shovelling a 2% dividend into the shareholder's wallets seemed, to the senior manager I was talking to, a right, not a reward that had to be earned)
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
A further point in this vein - running a peak hour Shepperton line train routing via Kingston non stop between Waterloo and Fulwell also benefited no-one. No-one going to or beyond Fulwell should be on that train as, during the peaks, there was a faster one via Richmond leaving a couple of minutes later. (Although I see that in the current timetable that has been reduced to only one train a day each way)
A diversion properly amended should update Darwin, removing the old stops and adding the new ones. It takes maybe 45 seconds although of course if there are 7 other tasks to do, it may come later.
Rounder type services have also behaved weirdly on CIS systems - I know Southeastern used to have issues of a similar vein.
What does rezoning have to do with making service disruption decisions?
The railway does not run on time 100% of the time, delays happen as is natural in a public transport industry and decisions have to be made.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
A diversion properly amended should update Darwin, removing the old stops and adding the new ones. It takes maybe 45 seconds although of course if there are 7 other tasks to do, it may come later.
Rounder type services have also behaved weirdly on CIS systems - I know Southeastern used to have issues of a similar vein.
My understanding is it was 2 hours after booked departure time (i.e OP is at the station at 1200 still seeing the 1000 service on CIS) and still showing "on time", but perhaps they can clarify. This might suggest the train had not been altered correctly - if it had it would have shown "cancelled" at the booked stop and eventually disappeared.
But you also can't rule out a system issue (as I said common with rounders and duplicate stops) as it would have otherwise been "delayed".
Was that off peak? (Special stops on both fast lines at Esher to allow passengers to cross over to get back to Surbiton - as platform 3 at surbiton not available)
My understanding is it was 2 hours after booked departure time (i.e OP is at the station at 1200 still seeing the 1000 service on CIS) and still showing "on time", but perhaps they can clarify. This might suggest the train had not been altered correctly - if it had it would have shown "cancelled" at the booked stop and eventually disappeared.
But you also can't rule out a system issue (as I said common with rounders and duplicate stops) as it would have otherwise been "delayed".
Nothing directly - just a further illustration of the low regard in which SWR and its predecessors hold its inner suburban market. Have you seen the state of Kingston station? When I started using it, I quickly discovered you needed an umbrella to use the subway. You still do, over 30 years later.
Andf of course, whe they do decide to run empty trains past crowded platforms in order to get the train and crew (but nobody who is actually paying for the service) to the end of the line, we get the lie "Stand Back - this train is not scheduled to call at this station" We know fine well that it is scheduled to stop - it is in the timetable - but Control have decided to tear up the schedule.
What can happen is that if a rounder is diverted via an alternative route and not amended on CIS it will show delayed but then returns to booked route down the line (for arguments sake let's say Clalpham Junction) the system gets a little confused, is now on time which sends an auto update, which could theoretically lead to the problem you saw.
Unique for rounder type services generally but should always be an amendment made by a controller into a system linked to Darwin to ensure the CIS is then correct. Again depends what level of disruption the overall service is in and the capacity for a information controller to catch up with every single amendment (among other tasks) and some may be missed.
What can happen is that if a rounder is diverted via an alternative route and not amended on CIS it will show delayed but then returns to booked route down the line (for arguments sake let's say Clalpham Junction) the system gets a little confused, is now on time which sends an auto update, which could theoretically lead to the problem you saw.
Unique for rounder type services generally but should always be an amendment made by a controller into a system linked to Darwin to ensure the CIS is then correct. Again depends what level of disruption the overall service is in and the capacity for a information controller to catch up with every single amendment (among other tasks) and some may be missed.
These are not rounders - they are Shepperton services diverted via Richmond instead of the usual route via Kingston. As far as I can tell the system knows nothing about it except that it was reported leaving Fulwell on time. They do of course return to the booked route at Clpaham Junction, albeit on the Windsor Lines rather than the main, but that doesn't trigger an update of the CIS at the missed stations.
I have always maintained that wrong information is worse than no information at all. I see announcers at Wimbledon having to contradict the CIS on platform 8 when it goes into "Two Ronnies" mode, announcing each train whilst the previous, or following, one is at platform) - inevitably not all passengers believe, or even listen to the announcers and board the wrong train - only realising there is a problem when they turn up at Motspur Park instead of New Malden (if they are paying attention) or Chessington instead of Hampton Court (if they are not). The announcers would have a much easier time convincing passengers to heed them if they had the means to turn the Automated Lying Machines off when they are misbehaving.
I remember at the end of December when my kids and I were waiting at Attenborough for our train back home and it skipped the station (even though it was scheduled to call there). I’m 99% sure the driver made some sort of wave gesture to us, whether it was an apology for not being able to pick us up or the fact he found it funny that passengers weren’t going to be picked up on the service they intended to travel on.
It meant that we had to wait for a train to go northbound to Beeston and then double back on ourselves to get home. We consequently arrived home over an hour later.
Luckily, the ticket inspector when checking tickets from Beeston was understanding of the situation - I wasn’t prepared to risk another train not calling at Attenborough and she got that.
Is it not about getting a right time start on the next departure of either the crew or the stock?
Sure, in the long term you might be able to amend the diagrams to allow longer turn around times or employ more spare crew but that involves vast timetable recasts and the spare crew, all of which costs significant amounts of money.
I remember at the end of December when my kids and I were waiting at Attenborough for our train back home and it skipped the station (even though it was scheduled to call there). I’m 99% sure the driver made some sort of wave gesture to us, whether it was an apology for not being able to pick us up or the fact he found it funny that passengers weren’t going to be picked up on the service they intended to travel on.
Attenborough isn’t a particularly pleasant station from a driver’s perspective (I sign it, but never stop at it). Often you’re on restrictive aspects, and there are way too many level crossings, of various types in the vicinity, for comfort.
And if the statistics are better (from the railway's point of view), it means fewer trains have been delayed or cancelled, and therefore fewer passengers have had their journey disrupted. Is that not a good thing?
And if the statistics are better (from the railway's point of view), it means fewer trains have been delayed or cancelled, and therefore fewer passengers have had their journey disrupted. Is that not a good thing?
Not necessarily. Not all trains are equal. Skipping busy stops to get a train to the end of the line on time (but empty) to make its return (counter-peak) journey on time is helping a handful of counterpeak passengers at the expense of many more peak passengers who are not ionly delayed but crowded onto whatever train they eventually do get.
And some decisions seem to defy logic. Once, a train i was on had to be diverted to Surbiton because of an incident on the Kingston line. Fair enough. But the guard spent a good ten minutes chivvying everyone off at New Malden so he could run empty to Surbiton. The decision to run empty to Surbiton can only be described as crass, both from an operational and passenger perspective. The only bus service from New Malden to Kingston is slow and crowded. There are many more bus services from Surbiton, and indeed many passengers bound for Kingston live within walking distance of Surbiton.
And whilst the guard was chivvying everyone off the train, a queue was building up behind it, blocking the slow line at the height of rush hour. There are two platforms at Surbiton serving the slow line.
If a train overshoots the destination and the passenger doubles back on the line, getting their ticket checked on the overshot portion, would that be a technical violation of RoRA 5(3)(b)? What about if a passenger waiting at the origin station has the intended train skip the station, and they head up the opposite direction to catch a fast train that goes down faster? What if aforementioned passenger boards an earlier train in the opposite direction having seen the CIS report their intended train's call be cancelled, only for it to be reinstated after the train the passenger has actually boarded departs? Have we ever seen such cases pursued by TOCs on this forum?
I was on a southbound Thameslink train recently which it had been decided would run fast between East Croydon and Gatwick instead of stopping at Redhill etc. By the time we reached East Croydon we had made up some time and were only 4 or 5 mins late. I watched the train on OTT and it arrived at Gatwick about 10 minutes early and had to wait in the platform so other services were slightly delayed.
And if the statistics are better (from the railway's point of view), it means fewer trains have been delayed or cancelled, and therefore fewer passengers have had their journey disrupted. Is that not a good thing?
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Maybe in some cases but not the case that started this thread off the train left the terminus only 2 minutes late with station skipping already planned. The following train that would have picked up passengers that needed the skipped stations was cancelled and all because the first train was 2 minutes late. Yes 2 minutes not 22 or 32 but 2 its complete incompetence
Not necessarily. Not all trains are equal. Skipping busy stops to get a train to the end of the line on time (but empty) to make its return (counter-peak) journey on time is helping a handful of counterpeak passengers at the expense of many more peak passengers who are not ionly delayed but crowded onto whatever train they eventually do get.
Every time I’ve seen this happen in practice it’s because (eg) train A is leaving 25 late, and train B will be five mins behind, stopping at all stations. In that situation it might make good sense to run train A fast all the way to its destination to form its return working on time (or close to).
Equally if train A is delayed en route, it might make sense to cancel it and turn it early if train B is close behind to enable passengers to continue in the same direction. Not doing this will potentially result in that train running out of sequence and very late for their rest of its diagram, impacting thousands more passengers.
Yet another possibility is the crew of a train needing a break, or else being at the end of their day, so running the train fast to save some time is a better option than cancelling it altogether.
Control are aware of which trains are busiest and will strive to ensure the greatest number of trains run on time, minimising delay to the greatest number. All of this will result in inconvenience to some passengers, but generally recovering the service is always going to be better than running with significant delays and stock/crew displacement. They don’t always get it right, of course, but the suggestions above that decisions are arbitrary, and don’t take passengers into account, is simply untrue.
And some decisions seem to defy logic. Once, a train i was on had to be diverted to Surbiton because of an incident on the Kingston line. Fair enough. But the guard spent a good ten minutes chivvying everyone off at New Malden so he could run empty to Surbiton.
And some decisions seem to defy logic. Once, a train i was on had to be diverted to Surbiton because of an incident on the Kingston line. Fair enough. But the guard spent a good ten minutes chivvying everyone off at New Malden so he could run empty to Surbiton. The decision to run empty to Surbiton can only be described as crass, both from an operational and passenger perspective. The only bus service from New Malden to Kingston is slow and crowded. There are many more bus services from Surbiton, and indeed many passengers bound for Kingston live within walking distance of Surbiton.
And whilst the guard was chivvying everyone off the train, a queue was building up behind it, blocking the slow line at the height of rush hour. There are two platforms at Surbiton serving the slow line.
Very difficult to turn a train at Surbiton as you have to pass through the station, and then have to stop before Hampton Court Junction, Then the driver has to switch ends, and the train has cross the two other Down lines, and the Up Fast to get back onto the Up Slow.
So the train would have run non-stop from New Malden - which is the last point it could reach as part of it's scheduled service - straight into Hampton Court where the two platforms (terminus) lines allow for reversals. That clears the train of the main lines. So the logical options to detrain the passengers would either have been New Malden or Hampton Court.
Also I don't believe the Down lines at Hampton Court junction are signaled bi-directionally
It’s quite an emotive topic, and one that has cropped up before.
Any Controller that says that make the correct decisions 100% of the time is a liar.
I’ve gone home from shifts feeling rubbish after a bad day of service disruption and thought I’d wish I’d done better.
But as usual the armchair experts on here, think they can do better. By all means, but as long as you have the same copy of the unit diagrams, traincrew dockets, fleet maintenance plan and have CCF and Trust open at the same time, then go ahead just to ensure it’s a level playing field!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when you are making split second decisions based on all the info you have!
That is an unfair comment, given that none of us know why the decision was made (and most on here have never been responsible for making such decisions either).
Yes indeed, and I was once told (and I agree) that it is better to make a decision which later turns out to have been sub-optimal than to sit back and do nothing.
Very difficult to turn a train at Surbiton as you have to pass through the station, and then have to stop before Hampton Court Junction, Then the driver has to switch ends, and the train has cross the two other Down lines, and the Up Fast to get back onto the Up Slow.
So the train would have run non-stop from New Malden - which is the last point it could reach as part of it's scheduled service - straight into Hampton Court where the two platforms (terminus) lines allow for reversals. That clears the train of the main lines. So the logical options to detrain the passengers would either have been New Malden or Hampton Court.
Well, it may have gone beyond Surbiton, but it certainly went to Surbiton and stopped there for a while (as I could see on RTT whilst I was stuck at New Malden) so passengers could have been detrained there out of the way of everything else on the slow line. What it did after that I know not.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Every time I’ve seen this happen in practice it’s because (eg) train A is leaving 25 late, and train B will be five mins behind, stopping at all stations. In that situation it might make good sense to run train A fast all the way to its destination to form its return working on time (or close to).
Equally if train A is delayed en route, it might make sense to cancel it and turn it early if train B is close behind to enable passengers to continue in the same direction. Not doing this will potentially result in that train running out of sequence and very late for their rest of its diagram, impacting thousands more passengers.
The former can work well, if the terminus is a popular destination - instead of everyone crowding onto the first train, only passengers for the terminus will be on the first one, and passengers for all the intermediate stations will be on the second. Very sensible if the terminus is Waterloo or Reading. Less so if it is Shepperton or Alton.
The latter assumes that train B can actually carry all the refugees from train A.
It also assumes that enough time will be allowed for people to get from one train to another - it is a very long way from the rear of a train that has just terminated in platform 1 at Kingston, to platform 3 where any service forward will call. All too often I have seen a train terminate at Kingston "because it's running late", and passengers unable to board the following service either because it is full or because they couldn't get to platfrom 3 in time - thus their delay is now 30 minutes, not 15 (but Delay Repay will be refused because there was a - albeit unusable - train within 15 minutes). One of the reasons we look forward to the 701s is, being 10cars, they are too long to fit the bay platform at Kingston and so Control will no longer be able to dump a train there
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I'm sorry, there are too many instances of empty trains being run past overcrowded platforms simply to get them back on schedule for that to be credible.
As I said before, Norbiton alone is busier than the six stations on the Shepperton branch put together, and Kingston is twice as busy as that. But Control's decisions make it clear they consider all the intermediate stations to be optional and getting to Shepperton as an end in itself (even at times when a faster service from Waterloo to Shepperton is available, so there is no reason for anyone other than the driver and the guard to be going all the way, non-stop via Kingston)
I am aware that Control do a difficult job, and I'm not claiming that I could do better. But any complaints or suggestions to SWR and its predecessors always result in a rebuff - never an apology, or an acceptance that with hindsight they could have done better, and take it as a learning point. Control is God, and to challenge them is blasphemy.
