How many trains operating at any one time?

[jha4ceb]

I wonder whether anybody is in a position to give an informed answer to this question:

During a normal daytime off-peak period, how many passenger trains are operating on the UK rail network at any one time?

Would be interested to hear estimates, informed guesses, or indeed official figures!

 

[142094]

This could be quite a tricky question to answer as in the number of units actually out on the network at one can can vary (i.e. some services may be doubled up or whatever). Probably easier to answer in terms of actual services.

 

[12CSVT]

There are loads of variables to a question like this.

Would you include trains which are ready for boarding but have not departed their originating station ?
What about trains which have just reached their destination but may still have passengers on board, trains which have been termnated short of their destination, trains which have come to a stand due to service disruption, ECS movements, plus many other scenarios I could think of ?

 

[jha4ceb]

Thanks for your replies.

I appreciate that one could reach very different figures depending on the answers one gives to the above questions. What I'm most interested in is how many trains are (a) running a service or (b) preparing to run a service.

Perhaps there are ways to get at the same question which avoid some of your worries, for instance: How many services are running at any one time? Or perhaps: how many services run per hour during a typical off-peak hour?