Experiences of service recovery (or lack of) on GTR Great Northern

[bramling]

That's pretty good considering Hitchin - Peterborough had gaps of 2 hrs yesterday and no alternative (as Cambridge does have the option of Greater Anglia if you need to get to London).

Another display of incompetence from GTR control just now. 9J33 has just run non-stop from Peterborough to Stevenage presumably due to late running. Just passed non-stop through Hitchin 1 minute early.

This just isn’t good enough. The service was appalling enough yesterday, could do without nonsense like this.

Sooner this operator is thrown in the bin the better, and first job for the new ownership is to sort out the control function. It’s not fit for purpose. They’re worthy of a yes prime minister sketch - we ran all our trains, just didn’t have any passengers on them. Like the Nightingale hospitals

 

[Bald Rick]

Another display of incompetence from GTR control just now. 9J33 has just run non-stop from Peterborough to Stevenage presumably due to late running. Just passed non-stop through Hitchin 1 minute early.

This just isn’t good enough. The service was appalling enough yesterday, could do without nonsense like this.

Sooner this operator is thrown in the bin the better, and first job for the new ownership is to sort out the control function. It’s not fit for purpose. They’re worthy of a yes prime minister sketch - we ran all our trains, just didn’t have any passengers on them. Like the Nightingale hospitals

One incident affecting one train. How is this incompetence? What would you have done in the circumstances?

 

[Steve Harris]

One incident affecting one train. How is this incompetence? What would you have done in the circumstances?

But it's not just 'One" incident, this has happened many times (sometimes with the service either side being cancelled, so a 2 hour gap with NO Service) leaving Huntingdon, St Neots, Sandy, Arlesey with nothing. If your lucky control with authorise a taxi which turns up 10 mins before the next running service turns up (so basically useless).

Are the trains supposed to be a public service or not ? @Bald Rick (I'll answer that question for you.. - Yes, but only in certain places ).

 

[Robski]

One incident affecting one train. How is this incompetence? What would you have done in the circumstances?

Run it as booked, or employ enough drivers to not have to delay it by 18 minutes because they didn't have a driver available. I'll concede that the latter is not the responsibility of the SDM but it is the company's responsibility.

 

[Bald Rick]

But it's not just 'One" incident

Of course not, but this specific incident was called out for incompetence, therefore a fair wuestion.

Are the trains supposed to be a public service or not ?

Of course they are. And public services need to best serve the majority of users.

Run it as booked

It did, from Stevenage.


So, again, in the context that for whatever reason there was no driver for this service at the appointed time, do you

1) run it late causing delay to everyone on the service and many other services on its way to Horsham, then have it leave Horsham late (15 minute turnround) and delay everyone on the way back north - it forms an early evening peak train to Peterborough - and cause dealys on many other servcices through the Thameslink core, MML and ECML?

Or do you have it miss 6 calls, affecting perhaps a few scores of people?

I know what I’d do.

 

[bramling]

One incident affecting one train.

It’s never just one train though, is it. This has been going on constantly since May 18, in one form or another.

How is this incompetence? What would you have done in the circumstances?

Firstly, it left Peterborough 18 late, so given there’s

(1) 7 minutes worth of allowance within the journey

(2) Numerous places on the journey where there are long dwell times booked at stations ( 2.5 mins at Huntingdon, 1.5 mins at Stevenage, 1.5 mins at Finsbury Park, 1.5 mins at London Bridge, 2 mins at Coulsdon South, 3 mins at Redhill, just to name the obvious ones), there should have been opportunity for the train to have reached Horsham and be able to be more-or-less right time for its next journey.

I’d have probably done nothing and let it run.

Second resort, turning it short at somewhere like Three Bridges or Crawley if the crewing arrangements allowed (inconveniencing less busy stations than Hitchin to Peterborough, and in most cases with more alternatives), or as a last resort run non-stop Peterborough to Hitchin but not omit Hitchin. All three of these options would have inconvenienced fewer people than what was done.

 

[Robski]

It did, from Stevenage.

So it didn't.

So, again, in the context that for whatever reason there was no driver for this service at the appointed time, do you

1) run it late causing delay to everyone on the service and many other services on its way to Horsham, then have it leave Horsham late (15 minute turnround) and delay everyone on the way back north - it forms an early evening peak train to Peterborough - and cause dealys on many other servcices through the Thameslink core, MML and ECML?

There is 7 minutes of allowances between Peterborough and Horsham so the delay into Horsham would have been more like 11 minutes (and it would be even less if the driver uses ATO through the core). A right time start would therefore be possible if it was done quickly, if not then a couple of minutes delay wouldn't hurt as much as 6 stops being pulled.

If for whatever reason it struggles to make up time, turn it around at Three Bridges and put additional stops on the Southern services. Far less impact.

Or do you have it miss 6 calls, affecting perhaps a few scores of people?

Well I've pulled up the passenger stats for this very train from a few weeks back (9th September, last available Tuesday with data). Clearly the impact would not be negligible.
[Screenshot redacted due to licensing restrictions, see description below]
A screenshot of an Excel table showing passenger counts on 9J33 12:24 Peterborough to Horsham on 9th September 2025. Passenger counts show 70 passengers on the train at Peterborough, 67 at Huntingdon, 70 at St Neots, 83 at Sandy, 94 at Biggleswade, 99 at Arlesey and 113 at Stevenage. Data is missing for the Hitchin call. For comparison, at Three Bridges there are 38 passenger on board, 29 at Crawley, 21 at Ifield and 10 at Littlehaven.

 

[bramling]

Of course not, but this specific incident was called out for incompetence, therefore a fair wuestion.

It’s incompetent to have a train run non-stop through a station booked to be called at, when running virtually right time, which it was at the point the train passed Hitchin.

Of course they are. And public services need to best serve the majority of users

Yes Mr Prime minister!

A reminder that pre-2018, the equivalent Peterborough to King’s Cross service would have had a turnround at King’s Cross of circa 20 minutes, so an 18-minute late start would have been unlikely to have all the potential knock-on effects mentioned. So we’re back to the whole point about Thameslink being inherently unreliable.

 

[Bikeman78]

This shouldn’t reasonably be expected to virtually remove a usable service between London and Peterborough. Either the crew arrangements aren’t robust enough, or the control function isn’t delivering what it needs to do.

I appreciate that two difficult incidents occurred virtually at the same time, however on a network as large as GTR it is reasonably foreseeable that this is going to happen on occasions, and the operation needs to be capable of dealing with it.

At any given time, there should be 12 units and 12 drivers on the Peterborough circuit. I assume the driver split is roughly 50/50 between Horsham and Peterborough. So once the dust settles and afternoon turns book on, you'd think it would be possible to run an hourly service from Peterborough to King's Cross. That would require three units and drivers. If platforms at King's Cross are a problem, terminate at Finsbury Park. It looks possible to reverse in the Thameslink core before St Pancras. There is a trailing crossover.

 

[Bikeman78]

It’s incompetent to have a train run non-stop through a station booked to be called at, when running virtually right time, which it was at the point the train passed Hitchin.

It's not just GTR. This morning the line was shut at Worcester Park owing to trespass. SWR decided to run all the Woking and Guildford stoppers non stop from Waterloo to Surbiton. On a four track railway that was open as normal. The Hampton Court trains are formed off the up Epsom trains, so they were up the wall. So it was virtually impossible to get from Wimbledon to anywhere west of New Malden. Initially this was announced until 1400. Fortunately normal working resumed at 1145 so trains went back to scheduled calls from then.

 

[Horizon22]

It’s never just one train though, is it. This has been going on constantly since May 18, in one form or another.

Firstly, it left Peterborough 18 late, so given there’s

(1) 7 minutes worth of allowance within the journey

(2) Numerous places on the journey where there are long dwell times booked at stations ( 2.5 mins at Huntingdon, 1.5 mins at Stevenage, 1.5 mins at Finsbury Park, 1.5 mins at London Bridge, 2 mins at Coulsdon South, 3 mins at Redhill, just to name the obvious ones), there should have been opportunity for the train to have reached Horsham and be able to be more-or-less right time for its next journey.

I’d have probably done nothing and let it run.

Second resort, turning it short at somewhere like Three Bridges or Crawley if the crewing arrangements allowed (inconveniencing less busy stations than Hitchin to Peterborough, and in most cases with more alternatives), or as a last resort run non-stop Peterborough to Hitchin but not omit Hitchin. All three of these options would have inconvenienced fewer people than what was done.

I think you'll find that service recovery and disruption has been going on longer than "May 18"! It wasn't all rosy and good times just because trains terminated at Kings Cross no doubt.

RTT has the train 2L through Hitchin also, not 1 early. It was back to booked time at Stevenage which is almost the perfect amendment to get back to right time running; no more, no less.

There are a lot of "ifs" in your statement there, how do you know crewing arrangements didn't allow? Doing nothing leads to knock on impacts, especially if you are running trains late through a congested core, and then any conflicts for example through East Croydon. There's a lot to consider. You wouldn't want to turn a train at Crawley, although Three Bridges might be possible. Also less busy stations might also be less well served, so even though there are fewer passengers, it may well be a longer wait. I'm not saying it does, but again another consideration. Also if running fast, this is effectively pointless if you basically end up behing a slow stopping service, so location has to be considered.

Service controllers look at a range of options before making decisions and have to balance multiple competing demands including turnaround times, platform recoccupancy, crew risks etc. It's all much more complex even if I can understand people asking "why did they do it like that". And yes decisions are easy to make in hindsight and not every single one will be perfect. Even when done with the right intentions, sometimes it works and sometimes there's an unforseen clash or issue which means that the plan doesn't work as intended. Especially on busy sections of line.

"Doing nothing and let it run" is exactly how disruption continues for hours on end - with more passengers inconvenienced - if you make no interventions

So it didn't.

There is 7 minutes of allowances between Peterborough and Horsham so the delay into Horsham would have been more like 11 minutes (and it would be even less if the driver uses ATO through the core). A right time start would therefore be possible if it was done quickly, if not then a couple of minutes delay wouldn't hurt as much as 6 stops being pulled.

If for whatever reason it struggles to make up time, turn it around at Three Bridges and put additional stops on the Southern services. Far less impact.

I would say that's now a) imported performance risk onto Southern services which will lose time and b) you're affecting passenger from Three Bridges - Horsham and Horsham to Three Bridges. Two performance failings, not one.

Well I've pulled up the passenger stats for this very train from a few weeks back (9th September, last available Tuesday with data). Clearly the impact would not be negligible.
View attachment 189370
A screenshot of an Excel table showing passenger counts on 9J33 12:24 Peterborough to Horsham on 9th September 2025. Passenger counts show 70 passengers on the train at Peterborough, 67 at Huntingdon, 70 at St Neots, 83 at Sandy, 94 at Biggleswade, 99 at Arlesey and 113 at Stevenage. Data is missing for the Hitchin call. For comparison, at Three Bridges there are 38 passenger on board, 29 at Crawley, 21 at Ifield and 10 at Littlehaven.

The train is at maximum 15% full... That's pretty negligible.

 

[bramling]

I think you'll find that service recovery and disruption has been going on longer than "May 18"! It wasn't all rosy and good times just because trains terminated at Kings Cross no doubt.

Yes, it really was. There was a long period during later WAGN and the whole FCC tenure when you could set your watch by the GN service. Well, Mondays to Fridays anyway. Essentially, you didn’t need to check what the service was doing before leaving the house.

Much as these two operators were a bit maligned, they really did know how to get the basics right. WAGN improved massively under National Express, and FCC kept it up.

RTT has the train 2L through Hitchin also, not 1 early. It was back to booked time at Stevenage which is almost the perfect amendment to get back to right time running; no more, no less.

It wasn’t 2L at Hitchin, it passed pretty much on time, I know because I was on the platform and saw it come past.

My point is that there was no need to amend it to get it back to RT. There’s 3 minutes of allowance between Hitchin and St Pancras, and a bit of extra station dwell too. So the amendment made was too aggressive, and inconvenienced a lot of people completely unnecessarily (and will have potentially cost some delay repay).

There are a lot of "ifs" in your statement there, how do you know crewing arrangements didn't allow? Doing nothing leads to knock on impacts, especially if you are running trains late through a congested core, and then any conflicts for example through East Croydon. There's a lot to consider. You wouldn't want to turn a train at Crawley, although Three Bridges might be possible. Also less busy stations might also be less well served, so even though there are fewer passengers, it may well be a longer wait. I'm not saying it does, but again another consideration. Also if running fast, this is effectively pointless if you basically end up behing a slow stopping service, so location has to be considered.

Service controllers look at a range of options before making decisions and have to balance multiple competing demands including turnaround times, platform recoccupancy, crew risks etc. It's all much more complex even if I can understand people asking "why did they do it like that". And yes decisions are easy to make in hindsight and not every single one will be perfect. Even when done with the right intentions, sometimes it works and sometimes there's an unforseen clash or issue which means that the plan doesn't work as intended. Especially on busy sections of line.

"Doing nothing and let it run" is exactly how disruption continues for hours on end - with more passengers inconvenienced - if you make no interventions

This brings us back to the whole thing of what is the point of running a service in the first place, if it isn’t to move people from A to B. Really, the least worst outcome once the train was initially delayed, is to get it to Horsham just in time for it to have a quick turnround and return close to or at right time.

This just feels like someone looked at the fact that it was going to leave Peterborough late, worked out that pulling a few stops would get it on time by Stevenage, and that’s about all the thought that went into it. If so, that’s poor decision-making, as it inconvenienced a load of people. A 60-minute gap at five stations, and effectively a 30-minute gap at another. Versus a bit of late running towards Horsham that probably could have been partially made up with some good regulating (which is another thing we seem to lack nowadays).

I would say that's now a) imported performance risk onto Southern services which will lose time and b) you're affecting passenger from Three Bridges - Horsham and Horsham to Three Bridges. Two performance failings, not one.

One late-running train shouldn’t be importing that much risk, and as I said elsewhere 18 minutes of late running ought to have been recoverable to the point where it was able to leave Horsham roughly right time. If the risk of importing delays across the river is so much of an issue, perhaps we shouldn’t have the cross-river services.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

This shouldn’t reasonably be expected to virtually remove a usable service between London and Peterborough. Either the crew arrangements aren’t robust enough, or the control function isn’t delivering what it needs to do.

I appreciate that two difficult incidents occurred virtually at the same time, however on a network as large as GTR it is reasonably foreseeable that this is going to happen on occasions, and the operation needs to be capable of dealing with it.

As we've reviewed on this thread and numerous others over the last 7 years Thameslink doesn't have the ability to pick up the pieces easily when one significant incidents occurs let alone a double Code Black as occurred today. I guess we have to accept the huge benefits that the route provides when it works well but you would have thought by now a review of contingency plans should have taken place

So it didn't.

There is 7 minutes of allowances between Peterborough and Horsham so the delay into Horsham would have been more like 11 minutes (and it would be even less if the driver uses ATO through the core). A right time start would therefore be possible if it was done quickly, if not then a couple of minutes delay wouldn't hurt as much as 6 stops being pulled.

If for whatever reason it struggles to make up time, turn it around at Three Bridges and put additional stops on the Southern services. Far less impact.

Well I've pulled up the passenger stats for this very train from a few weeks back (9th September, last available Tuesday with data). Clearly the impact would not be negligible.
View attachment 189370
A screenshot of an Excel table showing passenger counts on 9J33 12:24 Peterborough to Horsham on 9th September 2025. Passenger counts show 70 passengers on the train at Peterborough, 67 at Huntingdon, 70 at St Neots, 83 at Sandy, 94 at Biggleswade, 99 at Arlesey and 113 at Stevenage. Data is missing for the Hitchin call. For comparison, at Three Bridges there are 38 passenger on board, 29 at Crawley, 21 at Ifield and 10 at Littlehaven.

Interesting dataset which is presumably only available to internal staff understandably. That said its a useful source of data to look at loadings across the year and could be used to inform contingency planning perhaps.

 

[Robski]

I would say that's now a) imported performance risk onto Southern services which will lose time and b) you're affecting passenger from Three Bridges - Horsham and Horsham to Three Bridges. Two performance failings, not one.

The performance risk is not outweighed by the disruption caused by running fast. Point b is moot as there are alternative services that can be amended unlike between HIT - PBO, and as you can see there would be far less passengers affected - on top of all of this, it would be unlikely that such a measure would even be needed.

The train is at maximum 15% full... That's pretty negligible.

So your proposed action would be to cancel the train for it's entire journey, yes? Let it have a right time start on 9J57 18:24 ex-Peterborough, because those all important KPI's must be met! I don't see what other point you could possibly be making here.

In fact, why bother scheduling it! Let's just run trains at peak times when they are crush loaded! It's hardly a surprise that it isn't rammed with 1,750 people in the middle of the working day, but I'd still consider 244 displaced passengers to not be "negligible".

 

[bramling]

The performance risk is not outweighed by the disruption caused by running fast. Point b is moot as there are alternative services that can be amended unlike between HIT - PBO, and as you can see there would be far less passengers affected - on top of all of this, it would be unlikely that such a measure would even be needed.

Fully agree. It’s quite absurd to suggest that a single late running train is such a performance risk that it should be essentially expunged from the timetable.

Likewise, part of the issue is that between Peterborough and Hitchin there are no alternative services for most of the day. This being an issue was foreseen and envisaged pre-2018, and is somewhat different to many other parts of Thameslink, not least St Albans with its luxurious ten trains per hour.

 

[Magdalia]

Another display of incompetence from GTR control just now. 9J33 has just run non-stop from Peterborough to Stevenage presumably due to late running.

One incident affecting one train.

To me this looks like an excellent decision.

9J33 was an isolated incidence of a late start, with the following 9J35 running on time.

By running non-stop 9J33 covered almost 49 miles Peterborough-Stevenage in about 35 minutes for a start to stop speed in excess of 80 mph.

9J33 was on time through the core and all the way to Horsham.

A small number of people at intermediate stations lost a further 12 minutes having to wait for the on time 9J35.

There is a lot wrong with GTR but sometimes people should give credit where credit is due.

I think you'll find that service recovery and disruption has been going on longer than "May 18"! It wasn't all rosy and good times just because trains terminated at Kings Cross no doubt.

Yes, it really was. There was a long period during later WAGN and the whole FCC tenure when you could set your watch by the GN service. Well, Mondays to Fridays anyway. Essentially, you didn’t need to check what the service was doing before leaving the house.

Much as these two operators were a bit maligned, they really did know how to get the basics right. WAGN improved massively under National Express, and FCC kept it up.

It is absolutely right that reliability and resilience in the GN has collapsed since May 2018, compared with what happened under WAGN and FCC. Much of this was predicted before 2018, especially on the Hitchin-Huntingdon section, but ignored.

 

[Robski]

Interesting dataset which is presumably only available to internal staff understandably.

It's available to everyone through RDM: https://raildata.org.uk/dashboard/dataProduct/P-11552eef-b829-4ada-a34c-b11919622936/overview

 

[Horizon22]

The performance risk is not outweighed by the disruption caused by running fast. Point b is moot as there are alternative services that can be amended unlike between HIT - PBO, and as you can see there would be far less passengers affected - on top of all of this, it would be unlikely that such a measure would even be needed.

Why not? It’s a performance risk keeping trains running late throughout. That’s pretty simple to understand I would hope.

I still don’t understand at all how “doing nothing” would be satisfactory in this instance. It might not have been this specific intervention, however there are always several options available and pros and cons considered, often in a split-second with the controller needing to make 8 other decisions too.

So your proposed action would be to cancel the train for it's entire journey, yes? Let it have a right time start on 9J57 18:24 ex-Peterborough, because those all important KPI's must be met! I don't see what other point you could possibly be making here.

Where on earth did you get that idea from my post?! All I said was that the passenger loading overall is low in the grand scheme of things; there’s no peak direction amendment as it’s off-peak.

Therefore the number of passengers overall is low. You’d probably not make the same decision if it was the 0800 departure for instance. Time, location, crew/fleet information, secondary incidents, staff (signaller, controller etc.) workload are just some of the elements all at play here.

I’m just stating I can see why the amendment was made and providing context on why it was and wasn’t “incompetence”. Incompetence would be doing nothing or making the situation worse.

In fact, why bother scheduling it! Let's just run trains at peak times when they are crush loaded! It's hardly a surprise that it isn't rammed with 1,750 people in the middle of the working day, but I'd still consider 244 displaced passengers to not be "negligible".

For an 8-12 car Thameslink service it’s pretty low. Any train under 25% capacity on the rail network I would consider to be “low” personally.

 

[Horizon22]

Yes, it really was. There was a long period during later WAGN and the whole FCC tenure when you could set your watch by the GN service. Well, Mondays to Fridays anyway. Essentially, you didn’t need to check what the service was doing before leaving the house.

Much as these two operators were a bit maligned, they really did know how to get the basics right. WAGN improved massively under National Express, and FCC kept it up.

Sorry, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree here as I just cannot see this being the case & they wouldn’t be “maligned” if everything was running fine. I remember FCC’s rather notorious alternative acronym…

It wasn’t 2L at Hitchin, it passed pretty much on time, I know because I was on the platform and saw it come past.

Take that up with RTT then. Industry systems also show 2L by the way.

My point is that there was no need to amend it to get it back to RT. There’s 3 minutes of allowance between Hitchin and St Pancras, and a bit of extra station dwell too. So the amendment made was too aggressive, and inconvenienced a lot of people completely unnecessarily (and will have potentially cost some delay repay).

Again all with the benefit of hindsight. Did I say the decision was perfect? No? Is it understandable? Yes. Is it “incompetent”? No.

This brings us back to the whole thing of what is the point of running a service in the first place, if it isn’t to move people from A to B. Really, the least worst outcome once the train was initially delayed, is to get it to Horsham just in time for it to have a quick turnround and return close to or at right time.

The planned alteration helped the service get to Horsham “just in time”. In fact RT.

The industry is moving increasingly towards RT at all stops for performance reasons. This stems from PPM being seen as an imperfect metric because it was about destinations on time, not intermediate stops. And performance metrics ultimately help passengers. All the passengers south of Stevenage had an on-time service.

This just feels like someone looked at the fact that it was going to leave Peterborough late, worked out that pulling a few stops would get it on time by Stevenage, and that’s about all the thought that went into it. If so, that’s poor decision-making, as it inconvenienced a load of people. A 60-minute gap at five stations, and effectively a 30-minute gap at another. Versus a bit of late running towards Horsham that probably could have been partially made up with some good regulating (which is another thing we seem to lack nowadays).

You are making a lot of assumptions about “a bit of late running towards Horsham” and also with regards to any interaction through the core, London Bridge, Windmill Junction / East Croydon etc. That’s a lot of potential clashes.

One late-running train shouldn’t be importing that much risk, and as I said elsewhere 18 minutes of late running ought to have been recoverable to the point where it was able to leave Horsham roughly right time.

For someone who appears to be quite knowledgable in railway matters, this comment appears stunningly naive.

I don’t know of a regional / metro operator than can just “recover” 18 minutes without service interventions.

If the risk of importing delays across the river is so much of an issue, perhaps we shouldn’t have the cross-river services.

Well, that’s a different matter! Thameslink probably has more branches than is preferable from its core - compared to for example Elizabeth line’s 2/3 - which does run some risk of importing disruption. However it also comes with extra benefits when everything runs well.

Controllers have a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” reputation. The hindsight police are very much in operation here and even internal staff struggle to understand. Although people spending time within control rooms - and stations and route control - really find it helpful and I think 90% of people would cave under the pressure!

 

[GordonT]

Slightly weird this evening to see 1T56 1912 ex King's Cross-King's Lynn departing from Pl 8 at KGX at 1939 (27L)
with 1T58 1939 ex King's Cross-King's Lynn in hot pursuit departing from Pl 9 at 1942 rather in the fashion of a National Express coach "service car" plus "dup". The incoming train from King's Lynn 1T51 which forms 1T56 was 31L due to signalling problems (17L leaving King's Lynn) but for good or ill appears to have served all its booked stops unlike its previously discussed Thameslink cousin ex Peterborough-Horsham.

 

[Steve Harris]

Slightly weird this evening to see 1T56 1912 ex King's Cross-King's Lynn departing from Pl 8 at KGX at 1939 (27L)
with 1T58 1939 ex King's Cross-King's Lynn in hot pursuit departing from Pl 9 at 1942 rather in the fashion of a National Express coach "service car" plus "dup". The incoming train from King's Lynn 1T51 which forms 1T56 was 31L due to signalling problems (17L leaving King's Lynn) but for good or ill appears to have served all its booked stops unlike its previously discussed Thameslink cousin ex Peterborough-Horsham.

Which is silly in my opinion, as skip stopping to Cambridge wouldn't have a big impact as there are other options available for customers at the intermediate stations (Brighton - Cambridge service a few minutes after 1T56's booked time) and those from London could travel on 1T58 !!!

Whilst those "minority" customers between Hitchin - Huntingdon just have to suck it up for the greater good (who no doubt have alternative options available) when their services get pulled.
I think @bramling was spot on when they said

They’re worthy of a yes prime minister sketch - we ran all our trains, just didn’t have any passengers on them.

 

[Steve Harris]

Of course they are. And public services need to best serve the majority of users.

May I draw your attention to this passage (found after a very quick Internet search)...

In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings

Found at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public

And as far as I'm concerned "totality" means 100%, ( not 80%, nor 65%, nor 51%), or to put it another way, equal. So using the term "majority" doesn't cut it in my book. (British Rail had lots of failures but at least all fare paying passengers were treated the same. ie equal. Something that the modern railway is lacking IMHO).

 

[Horizon22]

May I draw your attention to this passage (found after a very quick Internet search)...

Found at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public

And as far as I'm concerned "totality" means 100%, ( not 80%, nor 65%, nor 51%), or to put it another way, equal. So using the term "majority" doesn't cut it in my book. (British Rail had lots of failures but at least all fare paying passengers were treated the same. ie equal. Something that the modern railway is lacking IMHO).

What?

The clear reference is to “a majority of users”. A “majority” is anything above 50%, not your off-topic definition of public. There’s some properly weird logic going on here!

 

[Steve Harris]

What?

The clear reference is to “a majority of users”. A “majority” is anything above 50%, not your off-topic definition of public. There’s some properly weird logic going on here!

Sorry but, upthread it was agreed running trains was a public service (see post #455) and I decided to do a Internet search on the definition of "public". Your welcome to disagree on that definition (which isn't OT (as it was raised in #455) ), but what I quoted is just one of several Internet sources which broadly say the same thing. So there's no weird logic going on in my part. If you don't like it take it up with Wikipedia. Or we can simply agree to disagree?

But it still doesn't change the inconvenience of customers from Sandy, St Neots, Arlesey and Huntingdon when services get pulled for long periods.

 

[Horizon22]

Sorry but, upthread it was agreed running trains was a public service (see post #455) and I decided to do a Internet search on the definition of "public". Your welcome to disagree on that definition (which isn't OT (as it was raised in #455) ), but what I quoted is just one of several Internet sources which broadly say the same thing. So there's no weird logic going on in my part. If you don't like it take it up with Wikipedia. Or we can simply agree to disagree?

But it still doesn't change the inconvenience of customers from Sandy, St Neots, Arlesey and Huntingdon when services get pulled for long periods.

Yes and the thread said "public services need to best serve the majority of users".

You were focusing on the "public" aspect, not the "majority" aspect.

Anywhere when trains run late, some people are inconvenienced. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the delay and reason, it is unavoidable that some passengers will be affected more than others. It's inconvenient for everyone to have a train cancelled at their station, but sometimes decisions have to be made for the "greater good" for all of the other stations / trains / passengers that will get an on-time or substantially less delayed service. Some stations are seen as more "important" than others either for passenger numbers, connections, influence (e.g. user groups, MPs), hub status, operational reasons (e.g attached crew depot) which has been the case for some time and will continue to be, although what stations they are may be in flux over time.

 

[Hadders]

Given that Hitchin and Stevenage get a more frequent service than Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy, St Neots and Huntingdon, if skip stopping is needed to get back on track then would it be better to omit Hitchin and/or Stevenage?

 

[Horizon22]

Given that Hitchin and Stevenage get a more frequent service than Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy, St Neots and Huntingdon, if skip stopping is needed to get back on track then would it be better to omit Hitchin and/or Stevenage?

Stevenage is a big hub though with impacts on connections and more passengers overall who may want smaller stations southbound too.

Skipping those 2 might be pointless if a lot of the passenegers at intermediates want to go for example, Stevenage.

There's no good options, just "less bad" ones.

 

[Hadders]

Skipping those 2 might be pointless if a lot of the passenegers at intermediates want to go for example, Stevenage.

But if you skip all the stations between Huntingdon and Arlesey the passengers from those stations can't go anywhere at all.

There's no good options, just "less bad" ones.

Agreed. I hesitate to suggest fewer calls at Stevenage during disruption as a frequent user of the station!

 

[Magdalia]

skip stopping to Cambridge wouldn't have a big impact as there are other options available for customers at the intermediate stations (Brighton - Cambridge service a few minutes after 1T56's booked time) and those from London could travel on 1T58 !!!

I don't see that this would have achieved very much. 1T56 might have been a few minutes earlier at Cambridge and Ely but would still have ended up in the same path over the single line between Littleport and Downham Market.

There is a big difference between what can be achieved by skip stopping on a 4 track railway and skip stopping on a two track railway or a railway with single line sections.

Given that Hitchin and Stevenage get a more frequent service than Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy, St Neots and Huntingdon, if skip stopping is needed to get back on track then would it be better to omit Hitchin and/or Stevenage?

In this case no. A key factor was the late running of 1E08 0900 from Edinburgh, due Peterborough 1247, which freed up the fast line.

But if you skip all the stations between Huntingdon and Arlesey the passengers from those stations can't go anywhere at all.

In this case, 12 minutes later they could go to all of the usual destinations.

 

[Horizon22]

In this case, 12 minutes later they could go to all of the usual destinations.

Indeed. What some people fail to calculate is that people go "but it's a 30 gap in service" but in reality if the 09:30 ran, and then 10:00 service is already say 20 minutes late and runs non-stop, the actual gap is only an additional 10 minutes (60 minutes versus 50) whilst people wait for the 10:30.