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

[bramling]

That's where that extra capacity comes in. If you have at least one train waiting at the terminus or nearby sidings that can be pressed into service to cover for a delay, then the problem goes away; the late Down train can then come in when it does, and either work the next service, or replace the sidings train that just left.

That only works if there’s a new driver waiting to take it over, which isn’t always the case.

The longer turnrounds at Kings Lynn from December should help, but this isn’t really dealing with the root cause of the problem.

 

[bramling]

It worked much better before this setup started in the December 2025 timetable. Granted there were a whole host of other issues that were complained about in this thread and others, but this change has added an extra level of 'worse' from before.

If we look at the May 2025 timetable:

- The fast leaves Letchworth around x07 and gets to Cambridge around x31
- The semi-fast leaves Letchworth around x11 and gets to Cambridge around x41
- The stopper leaves Letchworth around x20 and gets to Cambridge around x53

That's about as good as you're going to get I think, and while not ideal, at least there we have a decent spread and a delay of a few minutes to any of those doesn't delay the one behind.

I think the main problem with this setup is that - if everything is on time - it requires the fast to overtake both the semi-fast and the stopper before Hitchin, and also for the semi-fast to overtake the stopper before Stevenage. So this way you have a bit of a delicate ballet going on in this congested part of the ECML and potentially getting in the way of longer-distance trains - you can see why, on paper at least, it might be desireable to untangle that. The problem is that the current timetable which removes this overtaking south of Hitchin (where at least you mostly have a 4-track railway and the ability to reorder trains) results in this utter mess once you get past Hitchin (which has no mechanism for reordering).

I agree the current arrangement doesn’t seem to work, and the stopping service having the xx27 (or before that xx22) path definitely worked better.

However the previous timetable wasn’t ideal either, as the down Cambridge stopping services tended to pick up delayed starts as a result of the incoming Fen Line service interworking. So down Fen Line services stood more chance of departing King’s Cross on time, but then were quite likely to get delayed by the stopping service somewhere, which in turn set off the whole cycle again. The current timetable removes the stopping service from all this, but pushes all the consequences onto Fen Line services instead, which was exactly predicted on here before December 25.

May 18 was better, as both the stopping service and the Fen Line service had exceptionally long turnrounds at King’s Cross. This helped enormously, but took up 4 platforms.

 

[sharpener]

If we look at the May 2025 timetable:

- The fast leaves Letchworth around x07 and gets to Cambridge around x31
- The semi-fast leaves Letchworth around x11 and gets to Cambridge around x41
- The stopper leaves Letchworth around x20 and gets to Cambridge around x53

That's about as good as you're going to get I think, and while not ideal, at least there we have a decent spread and a delay of a few minutes to any of those doesn't delay the one behind.

Much better. Are there any plans to re-instate this? Dec 26 would be good but that will be cast in stone by now, what about next year? We live in hope.

I think the main problem with this setup is that - if everything is on time - it requires the fast to overtake both the semi-fast and the stopper before Hitchin, and also for the semi-fast to overtake the stopper before Stevenage. So this way you have a bit of a delicate ballet going on in this congested part of the ECML and potentially getting in the way of longer-distance trains - you can see why, on paper at least, it might be desireable to untangle that. The problem is that the current timetable which removes this overtaking south of Hitchin (where at least you mostly have a 4-track railway and the ability to reorder trains) results in this utter mess once you get past Hitchin (which has no mechanism for reordering).

ATM they seem to be able to find a path for the fasts on the fast line so its not un-doable. (The stoppers take more than 30 mins longer than the fasts so there has to be some overtaking.) And everything has to be on the single track at Digswell so the key must be to present in the right order there; the fast is due to pass Welwyn N at xx40 and the slow to call there at xx42.

The trouble is they don't seem to attach sufficient importance to the KLN trains in view of the crucial single track sections later on. It's like "out of sight, out of mind" once they are off the ECML when in fact anything that will help them to re-appear at the right point in time should be high on the list.

 

[bramling]

Much better. Are there any plans to re-instate this? Dec 26 would be good but that will be cast in stone by now, what about next year? We live in hope.



ATM they seem to be able to find a path for the fasts on the fast line so its not un-doable. (The stoppers take more than 30 mins longer than the fasts so there has to be some overtaking.) And everything has to be on the single track at Digswell so the key must be to present in the right order there; the fast is due to pass Welwyn N at xx40 and the slow to call there at xx42.

The trouble is they don't seem to attach sufficient importance to the KLN trains in view of the crucial single track sections later on. It's like "out of sight, out of mind" once they are off the ECML when in fact anything that will help them to re-appear at the right point in time should be high on the list.

The real problem with all this is the industry as a whole completely failed to appreciate how fragile the pre-2018 GN service was, and essentially only managed to perform well as a result of down trains generally all starting “right time” from King’s Cross.

It was never going to work well without some serious resilience measures provided, which basically weren’t.

It isn’t just the Fen Line which delivers a poor outcome for the end-user, there’s issues with all the other GN outer service groups too.

Cambridge-Brighton, which is the cause of a lot of the problems, just isn’t reliable, and is prone to late running, turning short, stops being missed, and of course pulled altogether at the earliest hint of troubles.

Horsham-Peterborough has similar issues, but fortunately interacts less with other services especially north of Hitchin. Again the service is erratic, in particular producing long gaps between services for stations north of Hitchin during disruption (not uncommon to have gaps of 2 or 3 hours), and has a habit of evaporating during disruption.

The Cambridge stopping services and the various peak extras are less affected as they don’t run through the core, however their performance is affected as a reaction to all the above. They also suffer from the whole issue of the service collapsing during disruption.

The Fen Line is worse because it runs non-stop south of Cambridge, has to run through congested locations like Cambridge and Ely, and of course the single-line sections.

 

[OneOfThe48]

Cambridge-Brighton, which is the cause of a lot of the problems, just isn’t reliable, and is prone to late running, turning short, stops being missed, and of course pulled altogether at the earliest hint of troubles.

In a thread about GTR not trying to recover or manage the service - if the Cambridge to Brighton running late causes bigger disruption to the rest of the service then pulling the service in disruption IS the right and good decision

 

[Failed Unit]

It was pretty standard this morning, with the lack of clear and concise communications.

Signal cable theft at Hitchin = passengers not having a clue when trains are going to arrive / be cancelled.

One observation is the 0700 Welwyn Garden City - Sevenoaks was delayed because the driver was in a taxi. Perhaps they should have travelled to the depot on one of the many cancelled trains in the morning? Surely an extra stop at WGC on one of the trains actually running would save a taxi and a delayed train?

 

[jon0844]

There was massive disruption overnight and trains being cautioned due to the loss of signalling, so I guess the driver was advised to get a taxi rather than risk not getting to book on and having the service to Sevenoaks cancelled entirely.