Alas, the way the mainland U.K. railways are run is not very good IMHO.
Partly this is due to to trying to run lots of trains on infrastructure that has capacity issues, especially at inflexible junction layouts and where lines have been singled (Network Rail and the predecessor companies prefer simple junctions to reduce maintenance costs). If everything is running on time, this works. But as soon as that is not the case, some trains will have to be regulated. Meaning they get delayed.
And partly this is due to the way that timetables and train priorities are decided. Should long distance cross country services instead have the highest priority? Should faster, but more frequent services (especially those trains that use more modern stock that has faster acceleration characteristics) have their priority dropped down a level? This would give long distance cross country services a fighting chance to reduce the amount of possible accumulated delay. As they would then get priority over all other traffic. Not a total solution obviously.
Similarly, turn around times may be insufficient to cope with a reasonable delay to the incoming service if it is late.
And it is strange that some services have dwell times of up to around ten minutes, but others have very little dwell times.
Some trains have ‘engineering’ or other allowances, while others don’t.
Combined, it’s all of the above that causes the ‘knock on’ delays.
Personally, I think increased station dwell times (within reason) and more allowances (also within reason) rather than a timetable that goes for minimum travel time, if it results in a more reliable service would be preferred by the majority of passengers. How many passengers do you think decide on which train to use based on the difference in journey times of say six minutes or less?
And some so called clock face timetables have departure or arrival times that vary by as much as ten minutes, this causes various problems when passengers don’t realise this.
To all the current and former control staff that have comments here about so called train paths and about the impact of one minutes delay, I have a question. If small amounts of delay cause the overall delay to accelerate, and this causes it to all fall apart, how on earth do we manage to run any train service when infrastructure problems cause delays? IMHO control are sometimes the cause of problems getting worse because of the time it takes for a decision to be made, or where they fail to take the local situation into account. The number of times I have heard signallers comment on an unsatisfactory control decision is rather large.
We (the railway) are also not very good at communicating to our customers (the passengers). It should be made crystal clear if a connection is never guaranteed, or if it may be maintained. With it clearly explained on what they should do if the train they are on is running behind schedule.
It appears to be typical political like misleading information. The railway likes to encourage passengers to travel via connections, advertises this in timetables and elsewhere, but often is very reluctant to honour said connections when trains are delayed. And if there is another train scheduled within 60 minutes, often don’t want to help their customers, even if it is likely that that later scheduled service itself may be running late.
I don’t know about currently, but prior to COVID19, the morning rush hour local Severn Beach and Avonmouth services into BTM around 8 to 9 in the morning were rammed full between Montpelier and BTM. So back then it would have been impossible for a guard (TM) to walk through the train, let alone do anything else. And due to the frequent and closely spaced station stops, that keeps them busy anyway.
Beyond Narroways Junction, the line to Severn Beach is only a single line with passing loops at Clifton Down and Avonmouth. And trains on this line are often bottom of the priority list.
But don't platform staff have access to how trains are running (see photo). As mentioned above, with a reduction in service frequencies, maybe connections (or the lack of) need to be taken more seriously, both in control and on the actual platform.
There are some of these displays on BTM station, but not many. And the vast majority of the customer information screens (CIS) don’t display train arrival details as an ‘arrivals’ display. Most either only show departures, or show the current and next train from a particular platform.
Trains are allocated a path, and, particularly at a busy place like Temple Meads, unless absolutely unavoidable, have to stick to these paths. The network is an extremely complex jigsaw puzzle, and just one piece slightly out of place can cause chaos.
How well it works also very much depends on how experienced the signaller for that area is. The train paths are not always fixed in stone.
And it should be easier to run trains outside the scheduled ‘path’ now that there are now six lines at Bristol East Junction (up from five), four lines up the Filton bank to Filton Abbey Wood (up from two). Plus three lines on the Bristol side of Stoke Gifford West junction (up from two). And four platforms at Bristol Parkway.
Unfortunately I don’t see any likelihood that anything will change with regards to improving the situation with connections anytime in the near future.
