A systematic way to find holdups between a station pair?

[TheManOnThe172]

What is the best way of producing a list of trains over (say) the last seven days which have taken more than x minutes between departure from Station A and arrival at Station B? I am a competent programmer but cannot afford to pay for data access.

I am on the warpath with EMR over their use of the £200m-improved Derby station layout. The new layout has moved the convergence point for northbound trains a good way north of the platform ends, creating a stabling space for when you need to get a train out of a platform but cannot immediately send it out onto the main line. My grouse is that EMR appear to be using this to achieve "on time" departure for Matlock branch trains even when there is a late-running XC train that will go first on the shared Derby-Ambergate section, and no pressure to vacate the platform. Result - Matlock branch passengers from the XC train dash over the bridge to find their train pulling out, then to see it sit at a signal outside the station until the XC has cleared. And then wait the rest of the hour until their next train.

I need to establish how often this is actually happening, and the first stage to this would be to get a shortlist of trains that had taken more than (say) 9 minutes from departure at Derby to arrival at Duffield (The WTT norm is around 6 mins). It would then be a case of manually checking each shortlisted example to look at other train times and platform occupancy to identify cases of gratuitous connection-missing.

It would be a real slog to create the shortlist manually. It needs something programmatic but I haven't so far found anything suitable for someone without a budget to buy premium website access. There are several sites I have found that can tell me how often a specific train is late at a specific station, but none that will filter on journey time between a specific pair (4 late leaving Derby and 4 late arriving at Duffield will report as late when tested for either the departure or the arrival - only by measuring time difference between the two can you filter for delay between the stations)

Any suggestions of how best to do this?

 

[LowLevel]

It's nothing new, the same used to happen with the former minimum connection time St Pancras arrivals if it was a matter of more than a minute or two under the old timetable.

Holding the Matlock trains in the station will cost an extra minute or two versus having them wait further along which will also be taken into account I guess.

 

[47519]

What is the best way of producing a list of trains over (say) the last seven days which have taken more than x minutes between departure from Station A and arrival at Station B? I am a competent programmer but cannot afford to pay for data access.

I am on the warpath with EMR over their use of the £200m-improved Derby station layout. The new layout has moved the convergence point for northbound trains a good way north of the platform ends, creating a stabling space for when you need to get a train out of a platform but cannot immediately send it out onto the main line. My grouse is that EMR appear to be using this to achieve "on time" departure for Matlock branch trains even when there is a late-running XC train that will go first on the shared Derby-Ambergate section, and no pressure to vacate the platform. Result - Matlock branch passengers from the XC train dash over the bridge to find their train pulling out, then to see it sit at a signal outside the station until the XC has cleared. And then wait the rest of the hour until their next train.

I need to establish how often this is actually happening, and the first stage to this would be to get a shortlist of trains that had taken more than (say) 9 minutes from departure at Derby to arrival at Duffield (The WTT norm is around 6 mins). It would then be a case of manually checking each shortlisted example to look at other train times and platform occupancy to identify cases of gratuitous connection-missing.

It would be a real slog to create the shortlist manually. It needs something programmatic but I haven't so far found anything suitable for someone without a budget to buy premium website access. There are several sites I have found that can tell me how often a specific train is late at a specific station, but none that will filter on journey time between a specific pair (4 late leaving Derby and 4 late arriving at Duffield will report as late when tested for either the departure or the arrival - only by measuring time difference between the two can you filter for delay between the stations)

Any suggestions of how best to do this?

You might find vaildata.uk useful

It shows berth history at every signal for the last three months

If you key in

Describer: DY
Berth: 5087
And the date

This is the signal that protects trains from platform 5 moving over to the main line

This will tell you when each train entered and left the berth. For example, most trains take around half a minute through it, but on 18th December 2A20 and 2A32 took 1½ minutes. This will not necessarily indicate that the train was sent out in advance, as it could be due to waiting for the XC train to clear the section ahead, or there could be conflicting trains arriving from the opposite direction, but longer delays might be worth investigating on RTT

Data from Vail can be copied and pasted to excel

 

[Kilopylae]

Am I being silly or isn't RTT's API free for non-commercial use?

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Am I being silly or isn't RTT's API free for non-commercial use?

Sadly, https://api.rtt.io/ gives this message:

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