How to know if first trains are running or not?

[Brooke]

Hi all,

Today I tried to use the second westbound H&C train of the day to go from Mile End to St Pancras.

I had assumed that if it didn’t run, I could hop instead on the first westbound Central and then up the Northern from Bank.

In the end neither of those trains ran (or certainly not at their timetabled times), leaving me with 10 mins to wait at Mile End and then a gentle jog at St Pancras.

What did I do wrong please for the future?

I checked the timetables and also TFL GO. Should I be using a different TFL resource on the day itself to see what trains are actually running?

Many thanks!

 

[Mojo]

You can view live arrivals on the TfL website on the individual station pages. Not a foolproof method as this doesn't work near the origin of the route and there are places with legacy signalling where it also doesn't work, but neither of these are applicable at Mile End.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

You might find Intertube useful on the day, it shows where trains are (down to the station they are at or between) as well as some more information.

intertube

intertube.eta.st

 

[Brooke]

Thanks - both very helpful. I live a couple of minutes from the station, so easy to check before leaving.

 

[Taunton]

You can view live arrivals on the TfL website on the individual station pages. Not a foolproof method as this doesn't work near the origin of the route and there are places with legacy signalling where it also doesn't work, but neither of these are applicable at Mile End.

This used to be an issue on the DLR at places like Royal Victoria, where if you came in shortly after service was supposed to start at 0530 you found the next train was shown something like 35 minutes, because the system only saw those actually out in circulation. Trains were starting to time from the depot out at Beckton, but because they were not yet out on the line they didn't show up until they did so. It was eventually fixed, so one would hope the feed to other sources for the Underground could be fixed as well.