Why are fictitious running times entered?

[Bertie the bus]

What is the point or gain in entering fictitious running times?

Yesterday’s 7E25 shows as having run into Crewe station but it didn’t. Instead of running from South Yard to the station for a run-round it just went south from Basford Hall Yard but times were manually entered showing it running into the station.

Realtime Trains | 7E25 1154 Crewe South Yard to Attercliffe Sdgs Ews | 06/03/2025

This isn’t just RTT incorrectly interpreting things as Railcam shows the same thing. The times were entered manually retrospectively.

What is the reason for doing this?

 

[Horizon22]

Ease? Especially if you're manually entering times with booked calling points you'd have to cancel them off otherwise (or explain an "N/R" potentially)

 

[Bertie the bus]

It was freight wagons going to a scrap yard. Who would you need to explain a N/R (presumably meaning no report) to and why?

 

[Spartacus]

It was freight wagons going to a scrap yard. Who would you need to explain a N/R (presumably meaning no report) to and why?

Off my area but Crewe's almost certainly what's called a Contractual Monitoring Point (CMP). At these locations there's regular checks to ensure trains that are booked to pass/call somewhere have reported correctly. Most get checked every 4 hours, others just every 12, but the reason is mostly about ensuring track access charges are paid, but also has other train running monitoring implications.

Now, standard procedure is to do a TRUST/WINVV TSID line up in each location and check you don't have any gaps. Any gaps need to be investigated and input where needed. If something's not on time it'll usually get closely looked it, but when it's not, and when people are busy, (and CMPs are relatively low importance, but relatively high priority) shortcuts get taken and when there's not going to be any late running implications, the easy way of doing it is just to put the missing time in as 'right time', especially if it's a freight or ECS. A passenger SHOULD get more attention.

So I think someone's just done their CMPs, seen the missing times for 7E25 at Crewe, and put them in as right time. ROG haven't exactly helped matters either, putting in a departure from South Yard when they should have changed the departure location to Basford Hall.

 

[Bertie the bus]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I do have a question about it though. If it is to do with monitoring doesn't just entering random fictitious times make any monitoring a bit of a sham?

 

[Spartacus]

It's a very small proportion of the total number and probably at least made up by the number of unscheduled shunts and short distance moves that take place. The bigger risk than putting in ones like the example above is putting in times for services that haven't run at all, but that should get caught if it happens, especially with a service train.

 

[Adrian Barr]

Yesterday’s 7E25 shows as having run into Crewe station but it didn’t. Instead of running from South Yard to the station for a run-round it just went south from Basford Hall Yard but times were manually entered showing it running into the station.

I think this may be related to the way TOPS works. Crewe station is shown on that schedule as a "detail consist point" where TOPS is expecting the train formation to be re-entered. A "detail consist point" will normally be any place on a freight train schedule where vehicles are potentially being attached or detached, or the train is reversing direction.

This means that before you could arrive the train correctly at its destination within TOPS, you would need to either arrive / consist / depart the train from Crewe station, or manually change the "detail consist point" to a "non-reporting point" within TOPS (which can be done, for example, if a train misses out a booked call at a yard and runs straight past). So the arrival and departure times may have been entered at Crewe station as a way of solving a minor TOPS issue.

ROG haven't exactly helped matters either, putting in a departure from South Yard when they should have changed the departure location to Basford Hall.

The wagons on 7E25 had arrived on a 6Z36 from Whatley into Basford Hall on 21st Feb. On 24th Feb they are shown moving as a 6T66 from Basford Hall to Crewe South yard via Crewe station (with an auto-report arriving at Crewe station 09:17).

It appears this 6T66 move has been done before, with a couple of photos on Flickr, such as this one of 37218 on Jan 13th: https://www.flickr.com/photos/garstangpost/54266704444/ (Photo: garstangpost.t21)

I'm assuming 7E25 was able to depart south from Crewe South Yard onto the Up Independent without entering Crewe station - if it wasn't possible before, perhaps the new signalling allows it?