Which minute has the most scheduled train departures?

[VItraveller]

So I’m not sure how you even calculate something like this, but I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on which minute of the day has the most scheduled train departures, based on the current timetable.

 

[AF91]

Which minute each hour or which exact minute during the day?

 

[greatkingrat]

I guess there would probably be a slight tendency towards easy to remember times, so more xx00 departures than xx59 or xx01.

 

[AF91]

I was wondering if xx59 and xx01 would get an uplift from the fact that TRUST can't cope with any timings being at midnight meaning that trains need to be shifted to call at either 2359 or 0001?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I was wondering if xx.59 and xx.01 would get an uplift from the fact that TRUST can't cope with any timings being at midnight meaning that trains need to be shifted to call at either 23.59 or 00.01?

I don't think there would be as many trains scheduled at midnight in the first place, though?

We had a thread last year about the most simultaneous departures from given stations - a good starting point would be to find that thread, look at the highest scoring ones from there, check to see if the current timetable hasn't wrecked that, then look for the same minutes at other stations across the country.

From memory, Clapham Junction had some times with 7 or even 8 simultaneous departures, so that would be a good starting point to find minutes to compare with other stations.

 

[greatkingrat]

I've downloaded the timetable data and had a play around with it. These figures are for the origin times only, not including intermediate stations.

Most common origin times
37 - 0700
34 - 1000, 1300, 2000
33 - 1100, 1400
32 - 0600, 0630, 1600, 1700
31 - 0620, 1500
30 - 0730, 1115, 1515, 1545, 1630

Of the 1440 minutes in the day, 1221 have at least one train starting its journey. The exceptions, unsurprisingly are all at night. Every minute from 0502 to 2359 has at least one departure.

Just looking at the minutes not the hours
TOP 10: :00 (559), :30 (505), :15 (476), :45 (452), :20 (406), :50 (389), :17 (341), :03 (325), :33 (323), :56 (321)
BOTTOM 10: :29 (171), :37 (178), :57 (185), :14 (185), :44 (187), :59 (191), :04 (200), :25 (201), :19 (205), :38 (208)

So there is a very clear tendency to choose easy to remember departure times as far as possible.