Daylight saving and railways discussion

[DelW]

I certainly do remember. The reason it failed was the insistence on adopting summer time, rather than winter (normal) time all year round, as was the case prior to WW1. It was also bad in London, though nowhere as bad as in Scotland. It was made worse by the refusal to adjust business hours according to the season, and flex time was rare. Young children were forced to start off for school in the dark when it was often the coldest time of the day.

There was a parallel with Portugal which reverted to their normal time zone some years after having experimented with putting their clocks forward an hour to keep aligned central Europe.

Personally I would prefer GMT all year round even though I live in East Anglia. But if England were to decide t adopt Central European Time, I see no reason why other parts of the UK could not be an hour different if they prefer. Other countries cope with different time zones with no problems. It is this biennial fiddling with the clocks that cause problems.

Ah, fair enough - it's surprising how few people are aware of it when the clock-change discussion comes up. I think that the installation of amber flashing lights at school crossings dates from then, introduced in response to accidents to children going to school in the dark on icy mornings. I lived in the Midlands, and my journeys to school were mostly in the dark for a month or two each winter.

All year round GMT does avoid the morning problems, but I'm sure there'd be complaints about losing an hour of light on long summer evenings. For sure, none of the options will satisfy everyone .

 

[adrock1976]

Both myself and my partner were born during "British Summer/Standard Time", even though my partner was born in February 1971.

This was when the UK had conducted the "Permanent Summer Time" experiment that ran from 1968 to autumn 1971 where the clocks were set to an hour ahead of GMT and left at that. The downside of this was that in Shetland, sunrise would have been at 10AM during the winter.

At the end of the day, it does not matter whether GMT, BST, Moscow Time, Atlantic Time, Pacific Time, or whatever is used, as there are still only 24 hours in a day and there would still be the exact same amount of daylight hours.

 

[Factotum]

You may not be old enough to remember that this was actually done in the late 1960s, when summer time was retained all year round, called British Standard Time.

It was intended as a permanent change, but it proved very unpopular everywhere other than southern England, and was abandoned and time changes were reinstated after very few years.

I understand the the EU is planning to do away with clock changes in the near future. Which means that conrary land Britain will be obliged to keep them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Oct 2021 ==

At the end of the day, it does not matter whether GMT, BST, Moscow Time, Atlantic Time, Pacific Time, or whatever is used, as there are still only 24 hours in a day and there would still be the exact same amount of daylight hours.

Do you have a source for that claim.
The number of people who extol the virtue of the extra hour of daylight bestowed by changing the clocks makes me doubt it.

Looked at logically summer time is nothing more than a trick to get people out of bed an hour earlier.
I couldn't possibly get up at six am. Ok we will rename six am as seven am. No prblem witrh that

 

[adrock1976]

I understand the the EU is planning to do away with clock changes in the near future. Which means that conrary land Britain will be obliged to keep them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Oct 2021 ==


Do you have a source for that claim.
The number of people who extol the virtue of the extra hour of daylight bestowed by changing the clocks makes me doubt it.

Looked at logically summer time is nothing more than a trick to get people out of bed an hour earlier.
I couldn't possibly get up at six am. Ok we will rename six am as seven am. No prblem witrh that

What I was taught at primary school many years ago was the following:

60 seconds = 1 minute
60 minutes = 1 hour
24 hours = 1 day
7 days = 1 week
2 weeks or 14 days = 1 fortnight
52 weeks = 1 year
365 days and a quarter = 1 year (based on the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun)

There is no extra hour of daylight when the clocks change from GMT to BST as it is still exactly the same if the clocks remain unchanged. All that the time adjustments are doing is moving the amount of daylight one hour earlier or later. Unless the principles and laws of maths and physics have altered since my schooldays, there are still 24 hours in a day and 365 and a quarter days taken for the earth to orbit the sun (rounded to two decimal places).

 

[DelW]

I understand the the EU is planning to do away with clock changes in the near future. Which means that conrary land Britain will be obliged to keep them.

very true!

Looked at logically summer time is nothing more than a trick to get people out of bed an hour earlier.
I couldn't possibly get up at six am. Ok we will rename six am as seven am. No prblem witrh that

I used to get up at 6am on work days, to leave home at 6:35 or so. I really disliked doing that in the dark, especially if it involved defrosting the car as well.

Since I retired, I don't get up until well into daylight .

 

[Grumbler]

What I was taught at primary school many years ago was the following:

60 seconds = 1 minute
60 minutes = 1 hour
24 hours = 1 day
7 days = 1 week
2 weeks or 14 days = 1 fortnight
52 weeks = 1 year
365 days and a quarter = 1 year (based on the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun)

There is no extra hour of daylight when the clocks change from GMT to BST as it is still exactly the same if the clocks remain unchanged. All that the time adjustments are doing is moving the amount of daylight one hour earlier or later. Unless the principles and laws of maths and physics have altered since my schooldays, there are still 24 hours in a day and 365 and a quarter days taken for the earth to orbit the sun (rounded to two decimal places).

Exactly so. Isn't there a saying attributed to a North American First Nations chief: "Only a white man would think he could make a blanket longer by cutting off a foot of cloth from one end and sewing it back on to the other."

 

[Master29]

The biennial clock change should be scrapped IMHO. It causes confusion with overnight services (particularly international flights), also countries change their clocks on different dates. Better to simply adjust timetables according to demand. Working hours tend to be flexible these days, so people tend to travel earlier during the summer.

Absolutely. It may have had uses at one time but its bloody pointless now as there isn't some magical solar system shift that occurs with the twice annual equinoxes therefore actually giving an extra hours daylight to planet earth although there are some who probably believe this. Most would have fallen off the side of the planet by now.

 

[Taunton]

The EU harmonised its clock changes in 1996. Previously the Continent had changed in September and the UK and Ireland in October, but we got the rest of Europe to see the error of their ways!

To be precise, it wasn't the EU that co-ordinated this, although they went along with it. It was arranged, over quite some years of negotiation, by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which is actually a branch of the United Nations. Different countries changing the clocks at different dates was of course far more of a problem for airlines, and various other industries as well, such as international finance trade. A classic thing for the UN to actually do. Just about every country went along with it. The decision whether to change the clocks at all, or not, is still a national one; broadly countries far from the equator do so, those nearer do not.

In very recent times the USA decided unilaterally to go for different dates in the year, which has caused a considerable amount of international dislocation.

Regarding railways at the changeover point, the classic was on SNCF in France, in the Spring when the clocks went forward. Loco crews in steam days were paid a bonus by the minute if they recovered time which was lost, and the prospect of a 60 minutes recovery payment was the greatest incentive to drive to the maximum possible. Not a lot of sleep was got back in the sleeping cars on that night!

 

[jopsuk]

I seem to recall that one of the opponents for scrapping daylight saving was Scottish farmers - they would have to get up earlier to milk their cows or something. Surely the cows don't know what time it is, so it doesn't matter when they are milked, provided it is time morning and evenng.

nevermind the cows, I've known farmers and they've had a loose understanding of time of day

 

[Hadrian]

When I was closely involved in such things (in the 1970s) we used to issue quite substantial special notices detailing the effects of clock changeover night on the timings of each timetabled train. At that time there was no shortage of overnight trains affected on a Saturday night including the many sleepers and newspaper trains, some mail and parcels trains as well as empty stock and light locomotive moves. As I recall there were also special diagrams issued for affected traincrew.

These special notices were rather more bulky than the normal weekly notices detailing retimings and diversions for engineering work and any special trains.

 

[jon0844]

The EU may want to stop changing clocks, but as Brits we can show them as fools by switching to Brexit time. Just turn the clock back 100 years this weekend and start to dress like Jacob Rees Mogg...

 

[snowball]

365 days and a quarter = 1 year (based on the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun)

More like 365.2422.

 

[Grumbler]

The EU may want to stop changing clocks, but as Brits we can show them as fools by switching to Brexit time. Just turn the clock back 100 years this weekend and start to dress like Jacob Rees Mogg...

Technically, it's the EU which is "turning the clock back by 100 years" to the period before Daylight Saving Time was imposed during WW1, first by Germany then by Britain.

But for once this is a sensible idea from the EU. No doubt the Europhiles in the UK will still want us to switch to German time to "strengthen our links with Europe". However Brexit supporters such as myself will not be demanding we set our clocks to align with our trading partners in the Far East, I hope we just revert to the time for our longitutude i.e. GMT, first adopted in the nineteenth century as "Railway Time".

 

[MadMac]

You may not be old enough to remember that this was actually done in the late 1960s, when summer time was retained all year round, called British Standard Time.

It was intended as a permanent change, but it proved very unpopular everywhere other than southern England, and was abandoned and time changes were reinstated after very few years.

I recall walking to school in the dark for a 9 AM start in Motherwell during this: a TV piece showed it not beginning to get light in Aberdeen until 10.

I often found myself working at night over the clock change weekends: when they went back, we filled out the regular start and finish times with a remark “clocks changed” and got the 13 hours we had worked. However, when the clocks went forward, the BR pay system couldn’t deduct an hour, so we ended up getting 12 while working 11. Apparently the cost of fixing it, if it was even possible, made it simpler to just pay the extra hour to the relatively few staff involved.

 

[SickyNicky]

I hope we just revert to the time for our longitutude i.e. GMT, first adopted in the nineteenth century as "Railway Time".

Do you mean that midday should actually be midday? Shocker!

 

[Taunton]

There are the usual views back and forth, but often from a Metropolitan viewpoint. The greatest benefit is to those in the north and west. Glasgow mentioned above. Ironically, the point the most north and west is County Donegal, Ireland, part of the EU, who would be absolutely against following any EU change - again a Metropolitan view, from Brussels.

Actually Ireland would likely follow what the UK does. When the USA changed the dates, Canada inevitably followed. Being the same as your neighbour trumps other considerations.

 

[edwin_m]

I find it pretty depressing when we suddenly lose all daylight after work/school hours in the evening, usually right at the start of the October half term (though it's at the end this year). So I'd be in favour of staying on BST all the year round, which would also put us on the same time as most of the nearby countries we might visit on business (not that that matters to the present government). I don't buy the argument about road accidents, as I think it's been proven that the sudden extra darkness causes more in the evening than are avoided in the morning. If Scotland wants to be on a different time zone then they can assert their independence and do so as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Grumbler]

I find it pretty depressing when we suddenly lose all daylight after work/school hours in the evening, usually right at the start of the October half term (though it's at the end this year). So I'd be in favour of staying on BST all the year round, which would also put us on the same time as most of the nearby countries we might visit on business (not that that matters to the present government). I don't buy the argument about road accidents, as I think it's been proven that the sudden extra darkness causes more in the evening than are avoided in the morning. If Scotland wants to be on a different time zone then they can assert their independence and do so as far as I'm concerned.

As a diurnal species, it is natural for us the be active during daylight hours. Now I am retired I generally rise earlier in the summer than in the winter, regardless of the time displayed on clocks. What does surprise me is the lack of willingness to adapt to the seasons, for example, the fact that kids have to walk along dark streets - why not shorten school hours during the winter but reduce school holidays a bit? I was a school governor for a whie and one of the issues was parents saving money on overseas holidays by taking their kids from school during term time. Of course the teachers blamed the tour operators, my suggestion that schools could help by staggering school holidays over a longer period, as happens in other countries, was met with "Oh no, we can't do that!".

 

[norbitonflyer]

I'd be in favour of staying on BST all the year round, which would also put us on the same time as most of the nearby countries we might visit on business (not that that matters to the present government).

In practice, I found when I was still working that the 1-hour time difference with Germany wasn't a problem. More relevant was the fact that for most of the year we are only five, not six, hours ahead of the eastern USA. This overlap in office hours makes telephone discussions much easier to arrange. Even California, 8 hours behind the UK for most of the year - is possible if you are prepared to work a little late. (And in practice we were more likely to talk to American clients than European ones because there are fewer linguistic difficulties - most correspondence with Europe was by email)

 

[Gloster]

I may be a slight cynic, but I wonder whether the lack of interest in changing school hours is not entirely unconnected to the fact that, even now, a fair number of MPs and senior civil servants either went to or sent their offspring to boarding schools. Boarding schools are generally entirely on one site and so there is no problem about the horrors having to wander around the streets morning and evening in the dark. They are also free to adjust their timetables without any reference to the parents’ convenience: at my school sport was held after the afternoon classes in summer, but after lunch in winter, with classes then running from 16.30-18.30.

Even those who don’t have children at a boarding school are likely to have the financial wherewithal to drive their brats to school in a Chelsea tractor, rather than them having to walk or go by bus.

 

[edwin_m]

In practice, I found when I was still working that the 1-hour time difference with Germany wasn't a problem. More relevant was the fact that for most of the year we are only five, not six, hours ahead of the eastern USA. This overlap in office hours makes telephone discussions much easier to arrange. Even California, 8 hours behind the UK for most of the year - is possible if you are prepared to work a little late. (And in practice we were more likely to talk to American clients than European ones because there are fewer linguistic difficulties - most correspondence with Europe was by email)

I have the opposite experience, working mainly with Europe (they all speak English these days) and the Middle East. I've a feeling my tolerable 0800 update is about to become 0700.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Technically, it's the EU which is "turning the clock back by 100 years" to the period before Daylight Saving Time was imposed during WW1, first by Germany then by Britain.

But for once this is a sensible idea from the EU. No doubt the Europhiles in the UK will still want us to switch to German time to "strengthen our links with Europe". However Brexit supporters such as myself will not be demanding we set our clocks to align with our trading partners in the Far East, I hope we just revert to the time for our longitutude i.e. GMT, first adopted in the nineteenth century as "Railway Time".

I'm very pro-European and anti-Brexit, but would very much prefer to be permanently on GMT.

 

[al78]

As someone who is a night owl by nature, I'd prefer to be on BST year round but can see that wouldn't be agreeable for those living further north. BST in summer gives me more opportunity to work on my allotment after work, there is no way I am getting up at 4am to work on it prior to doing a full days work.

Cycling to work is more pleasant in daylight so that is another advantage of BST for me.

 

[The Quincunx]

I am surprised nobody has mentioned the secene in the Will Hay film "Oh, Mr Porter!" yet.

 

[Bill57p9]

Actually Ireland would likely follow what the UK does. When the USA changed the dates, Canada inevitably followed. Being the same as your neighbour trumps other considerations.

Try telling that to the Portuguese!
Though they probably quite like being different to Spain on a point of principal and to be fair Spain was in the same timezone as Portugal, UK and Ireland before aligning with Germany as an act of solidarity in WWII

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Twice every year we hear the same grumbles about the clocks changing... but as the 60s experiment showed, NOT changing the clocks caused more problems than it solved. In general, drivers on the road are more likely to mess up before sunrise than they are after sunset, so it's generally safer to have daylight for the morning rush hour.

 

[Falcon1200]

I find it pretty depressing when we suddenly lose all daylight after work/school hours in the evening, usually right at the start of the October half term (though it's at the end this year). So I'd be in favour of staying on BST all the year round, which would also put us on the same time as most of the nearby countries we might visit on business (not that that matters to the present government). I don't buy the argument about road accidents, as I think it's been proven that the sudden extra darkness causes more in the evening than are avoided in the morning. If Scotland wants to be on a different time zone then they can assert their independence and do so as far as I'm concerned.

I live in Scotland but would also prefer BST all year round, the 'extra' hour of daylight IMHO being far more useful in the afternoon than the morning. I am sceptical too about the oft-quoted 'more accidents in the dark winter mornings' statement, surely people are more alert in the morning than after a day at work, school, etc ?

However different parts of the UK cannot possibly be in different time zones !

 

[Grecian 1998]

The clock changes are done for a reason - southern England has approx 8 hours of daylight at the winter solstice and 16.5 hours at the summer solstice. The difference is greater further north.

8 hours in winter means it isn't possible to go to work, do a 9-5 job and go home in daylight for most people. The practical experience indicates there are fewer crashes if the hours of darkness are after work than before. It also allows primary schoolchildren largely to go to school and come home in daylight.

Obviously it does depend where you are - sunrise in Ramsgate on 21 December is almost an hour earlier than Fort William.

In the summer however, remaining on GMT would see the sun rise in June before 4am for most of the country (when almost no-one is about) and set everywhere before 9pm (when a lot of people are about). Using BST gives a significant electricity saving, most likely reduces crime against individuals (although perhaps not properties) and helps people top up the old Vitamin D.

If you used GMT all year round sunrise would be just after 3am in Aberdeen in June and sunset would be just after 8.10pm in Dover.

The current system allows the best use of limited daylight in winter and a more-energy efficient use of daylight in the summer. I appreciate some people find the change inconvenient, but it's the best use of the light we have. Whilst it isn't changing natural time, only the way humans count it, if you didn't shift the clocks then it's quite possible schools and businesses would end up shifting their hours anyway.

TBF if you do shift work rather than a 9-5 job as most (all?) rail staff do, then I can see why you might favour a single consistent timezone.

The EU's effort to stop changing clocks appears to have stalled. If it does eventually go ahead, I suspect it will be changed back within a few years when it becomes clear why the clocks changed twice a year in the first place.

 

[adrock1976]

I live in Scotland but would also prefer BST all year round, the 'extra' hour of daylight IMHO being far more useful in the afternoon than the morning. I am sceptical too about the oft-quoted 'more accidents in the dark winter mornings' statement, surely people are more alert in the morning than after a day at work, school, etc ?

However different parts of the UK cannot possibly be in different time zones !

It is not an "extra" hour of daylight at all as it is simply being moved an hour earlier or later.

Regarding different parts of the UK being in different time zones, I recall that back in the second half of the 1990s, the former MP (who did time courtesy of Lizzie Windsor) and author Jeffrey Archer proposed that different regions of the UK should have different time zones (or words more or less to that effect). This would have created anomalies in that Newcastle upon Tyne to Edinburgh would appear to be four hours in that direction, but Edinburgh to Newcastle upon Tyne would be one hour or something like that.

Needless to say, there was a letter in the local/regional rag pouring scorn on Archer's suggestion, and that it had mentioned that Archer should stick to his day job of writing fiction, as that is what his suggested proposal was.

 

[Taunton]

A onetime Miss T had the best approach on clock change Sunday morning.

Spring : "It's 9 o'clock now you've changed the wall clock, but really only 8 o'clock on my watch, so I can have an extra hour in bed. See you later".

Autumn : "It's 9 o'clock on my watch, but that's only 8 o'clock on the wall clock now, so I can have an extra hour in bed. See you later".