December 2026 Timetable Change

[bramling]

It's annoying because were all 30 379s better utilised, and without these new extended turnarounds, you could have very comfortably run the Cruiser services with 379s exclusively, allowing for two more pairs of 387 to be used on Cambridge stoppers.

It should certainly be possible to be running 27/30 379s on weekdays, which would cover the 387s on Fen Line services.

This would then produce 8/16 387 utilisation, however three of those were presumably intended to go to Southern at one point, and 387101 remains out of service. So potentially this reduces to 8/12. Allowing for some headroom, this probably only gives scope for one further pair of 387s, which will likely happen if Welwyn-Sevenoaks goes all-day.

I’ve always wondered if the nominal 8 GN-only 700 diagrams could be more gainfully employed on certain Southern metro routes, but this would of course require crew training, and introduce an issue that they wouldn’t be on the route of their depot at Hornsey.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

It's annoying because were all 30 379s better utilised, and without these new extended turnarounds, you could have very comfortably run the Cruiser services with 379s exclusively, allowing for two more pairs of 387 to be used on Cambridge stoppers.

The extended turnarounds are needed, it was proven the 10 mins or less during the day wasn’t robust in any sense.

 

[bramling]

The extended turnarounds are needed, it was proven the 10 mins or less during the day wasn’t robust in any sense.

100%. It shouldn’t have even been attempted. The longer turnrounds will definitely help, but they won’t be a magic bullet, as turnrounds at Kings Lynn aren’t the underlying problem, they just massively exacerbate everything else.

Presumably from December up trains will be prioritised, so passengers on down trains can expect to have plenty of opportunity to admire scenery at Littleport and Watlington.

To make an improvement it will also require slack in driver diagrams, which has never been GTR’s strong point…