Whittlesea station and East Midlands Railway stopping cancellations

LowLevel said:

Indeed - the 170/1s were originally different but were modified around 2013 to the same SDO system as the /3, /5 and /6 fleet. Before that you had to be careful on certain diagrams as they couldn't serve short platforms.

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Class 170101 said:

Pretty certain it wasn't.

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dk1 said:

No, the guards operated the red deselect button in the rear cab. This stopped the doors opening on the rear coach. There was and still is no DOO on Anglia local routes.

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170/1s when with Midland Mainline, were Driver door key switch on and release, door key switch off, Guard door key switch on and close and dispatch.
In the driving cab, there was a door deselect button that kept the leading vehicle closed and was used at Long Eaton as an example, where the stopping point for certain length trains was beyond the end of the platform.

whoosh said:

170/1s when with Midland Mainline, were Driver door key switch on and release, door key switch off, Guard door key switch on and close and dispatch.
In the driving cab, there was a door deselect button that kept the leading vehicle closed and was used at Long Eaton as an example, where the stopping point for certain length trains was beyond the end of the platform.

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Okay. We operated the other way around with the DKS (CDL key) then press the deselect button (illuminated) and then door release. Rear most carriage locked out. Even the 2-cars (270-273) had this facility too if I remember correctly. It’s been over six years since we operated anything other than 755s on our local services.

LowLevel said:

It is because the train is booked a 3 car 170, but EMR only consider the down platform suitable for releasing 1 carriage's doors as there isn't sufficient extra margin of error for stopping with 2.

The problem is there are 2 types of 3 car 170, the diagram is booked for one of the 7 x 170/4s which have door controls in all carriage saloons. However, on the 170/2 3 car sets there are only door controls in the middle carriage and rear cab accessible to the guard so you can't stop at single carriage platforms so Whittlesea gets a not to stop order.

It robs Whittlesea of it's main morning peak service and is a far from satisfactory outcome, particularly given the same units used to serve the station routinely for Anglia, however there isn't the budget to standardise the door controls and EMR don't appear to be willing to agree to work the platform with 2 coaches so that's the result.

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Thanks LowLevel for such an informative reply, I genuinely mean that. Never occurred to me the cancellations could be because of what you described but at least I know now. Thank you.

The train (1R62) fails to stop at Whittlesea 2 or 3 times per month which is clearly unsatisfactory. However RTT shows on these occasions that it did stop (this morning at 08:21 for example). Is RTT not generally trustworthy?

Today's stop 02/09/26 was cancelled.

Starmill said:

Today's stop 02/09/26 was cancelled.

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Hence my question above (#34). Between Ely and Sheffield the train consisted of a 2-coach unit leading a 3-coach unit.

IanMac said:

The train (1R62) fails to stop at Whittlesea 2 or 3 times per month which is clearly unsatisfactory. However RTT shows on these occasions that it did stop (this morning at 08:21 for example). Is RTT not generally trustworthy?

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RTT shows an arrival time for Whittlesea because it is a booked stop so it is expecting to record an arrival time (the cancellation of the stop often doesn't filter down to RTT). However the recording of the Arrival and Departure times at the exact same time indicates that the train did not stop. This is quite common for not-to-stop orders issued on the day, due to the way the systems filter down to each other.

The reverse will often happen for Special Stop Orders - RTT is not expecting the train to call, so does not record an arrival time. It will put the arrival time in the 'Departure' column (really a Depart/Pass column) until it does actually depart, when the movement will overwrite the previous arrival time. After the event, all that will be visible on RTT would be the train losing another few minutes from the previous timing point.


[Screenshot of 'Simple View' of 1R62 0651 Norwich to Liverpool Lime Street showing recording arrival and departure times at March, Whittelsea, Peterborough and Grantham. Whittlesea shows arrival and departure both at 0821 whereas all other stations have at least 1 minute's difference between the arrival and departure time]

Thanks, that explains it!

IanMac said:

The train (1R62) fails to stop at Whittlesea 2 or 3 times per month which is clearly unsatisfactory. However RTT shows on these occasions that it did stop (this morning at 08:21 for example). Is RTT not generally trustworthy?

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RTT will be as accurate as upstream data. Fail to stops have to be keyed into the system manually and may take up to 8 days to reflect in some cases (or even not at all if not correctly entered) in upstream data source. It is also not an official source so you cannot rely on it for definitive answers. The journey check messages from operators should always take precedence for those purposes.

zwk500 said:

the cancellation of the stop often doesn't filter down to RTT

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RTT does not reflect cancellations of stops, only stops that the TD data and reference data suggest were not made. As this is a manual reporting location RTT will not reflect the cancellation/stop not made.

zwk500 said:

However the recording of the Arrival and Departure times at the exact same time indicates that the train did not stop.

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It may do in this specific case, but it does not generally. There are many manual reporting locations which report arrival and departures of the same time each day and most are not indications of not stopping.