Sectional Appendix Error

I noticed an inconsistency between the London North East and Anglia Sectional Appendices, one of them has to be wrong!

The Anglia Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 32ch on the route from Liverpool Street
The LNE Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 06ch on the route from Liverpool Street.

I noticed from OS maps that the Jcn is barely 1km North of Shelford railway station, and ~2km South of Cambridge South, this suggests to me that the LNE document has the correct mileage. Therefore Anglia Region seem to have the wrong location for a junction on their patch!
Or maybe I missed something?

There are loads of errors in the sectional appendix. Nobody seems particularly fussed about rectifying them.

There's a procedure detailed here:

Iirc it's quite a long junction now, so is it possible that both are correct?

As noted, the sectional appendices vary from (mostly) extremely accurate to elaborate works of historical fiction

takno said:

As noted, the sectional appendices vary from (mostly) extremely accurate to elaborate works of historical fiction

Click to expand...

I followed the process above to report a tunnel and a station that were missing. Got an email to thank me for my report and they would investigate.

5 years later neither are there.

sjm77 said:

The Anglia Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 32ch on the route from Liverpool Street
The LNE Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 06ch on the route from Liverpool Street.

Click to expand...

The former is correct, the junction has moved ever so slightly since the line speed was increased over it. I assume you are using the online PDF copies, which state that the LNE version in that area is shown for "convenience of users only", however there is nothing convenient about it as it was last updated in 2016!

sjm77 said:

I noticed an inconsistency between the London North East and Anglia Sectional Appendices, one of them has to be wrong!

The Anglia Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 32ch on the route from Liverpool Street
The LNE Sectional Appendix has Shepreth Branch Jcn at 53m 06ch on the route from Liverpool Street.

I noticed from OS maps that the Jcn is barely 1km North of Shelford railway station, and ~2km South of Cambridge South, this suggests to me that the LNE document has the correct mileage. Therefore Anglia Region seem to have the wrong location for a junction on their patch!
Or maybe I missed something?

Click to expand...

What you have missed is that the junction was moved at Christmas 2024 as part of the Cambridge South project.

This is the second time that the junction has moved, it was also moved in 1983, though over a much shorter distance. Prior to 1983 the junction was 53m5c from Liverpool Street.

Before the recent alterations the old milepost 53 was just south of the junction. I have a 2001 Railtrack East Anglia Sectional Appendix that gives Websters LC as 53m3c and the old junction as 53m6c. The blue footbridge over the old junction replaced the right of way over Websters LC.

The next location in the 2001 Railtrack East Anglia Sectional Appendix is Dukes No2 UWC which was at 53m34c. Both Websters LC and Dukes No2 UWC were closed as part of the Cambridge South Transport and Works Act Order.

The new junction is very close to where Dukes No2 UWC used to be. If you look very carefully on the up side you can see the bit of fence that replaced the crossing gate. On the up side it is also still possible to see where Websters LC used to be.

53m32c is correct for the new junction.

You can also see all of this by taking a walk or a bike ride along the DNA path between Shelford and Cambridge South.

Last time I cycled the DNA path, it was in sore need of some gene therapy. Many, if not most, of the coloured stripes were worn away. Doesn’t bode well for DNA’s potential damage from sunlight. Wear sunscreen, everyone!

skyhigh said:

There are loads of errors in the sectional appendix. Nobody seems particularly fussed about rectifying them.

Click to expand...

skyhigh said:

I followed the process above to report a tunnel and a station that were missing. Got an email to thank me for my report and they would investigate.

5 years later neither are there.

Click to expand...

Wow, I had no idea!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Sep 2026 ==

Magdalia said:

What you have missed is that the junction was moved at Christmas 2024 as part of the Cambridge South project.

Click to expand...

So are there new tracks for the Royston route that now run parallel for 26 chains? I am asking because Google Maps satellite view does not shoe this (yet)?

sjm77 said:

Wow, I had no idea!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Sep 2026 ==


So are there new tracks for the Royston route that now run parallel for 26 chains? I am asking because Google Maps satellite view does not shoe this (yet)?

Click to expand...

In a nutshell, yes.

The reason Google satellite view isn't showing this yet I'd because it hasn't been updated yet.

In some places it appears that Google satellite view is up to 10 years out of date, which doesn't surprise me really, as it costs money to scan and then get all that data onto servers and published.

sjm77 said:

So are there new tracks for the Royston route that now run parallel for 26 chains?

Click to expand...

No. What has changed is that the new 50mph crossovers are much longer than the old 30mph crossovers, and further apart.

rower40 said:

Last time I cycled the DNA path, it was in sore need of some gene therapy. Many, if not most, of the coloured stripes were worn away. Doesn’t bode well for DNA’s potential damage from sunlight. Wear sunscreen, everyone!

Click to expand...

I used to enjoy noticing the DNA path from the train, but I don't seem to clock it in the same way anymore, presumably for this reason.

skyhigh said:

I followed the process above to report a tunnel and a station that were missing. Got an email to thank me for my report and they would investigate.

5 years later neither are there.

Click to expand...

Which ones are they? I can try and report it internally.

class442 said:

Which ones are they? I can try and report it internally.

Click to expand...

I tried reporting things internally years ago when I worked for NR, but Kensington Olympia's down platform loop is still officially non-passenger (SO250.006, p.387 of the PDF), the Change of Mileage/ELR east of Lewes (KJE1 to KJE2, SO590.003-4, p.516) is still missing.

Part of the problem with getting errors corrected is that for obvious reasons the approvals process for changes to the sectional appendix is rather strict. And presumably the team who actually look after the source drawings are doing other things as well.

Although there was a page of (I think) GW700 that did manage to get corrected. It had been showing one of the lines as non-passenger throughout when it very much was passenger-rated!

And that's before you even get started on the quality of some recent drawings trying to squish new infrastructure into the end of a page it clearly doesn't fit on, or the Wessex region's habit of labelling every new differential speed restriction despite that fact being rather self-evident!
The latter is particularly frustrating in that the sectional appendix does not (generally) note where the boundaries between differential speeds and the 2/3rds rule actually are and so there can be confusion where single speeds appear on the edges of differential speed restrictions. But that's a rather major task to go through and add to the entire Southern Region now.

Here's the live versions for Shepreth Branch junction. They should be pretty accurate following Cambridge South's completion.