Timetabling trains and leaf fall

[infobleep]

Hi there

I am fascinated by the timetabling of trains. This morning I was on the 8.04 stopping service from Guildford to Waterloo.

Before the leaf fall timetable was introduced it use to leave at 8.07. This leaves from platform 2.

Now according to the public timetable there is an 8.05 arrival from London via Effinghm Junction, which comes into platform 3.

What happened this morning is that the 8.05 arrival blocked our path around 8.04 meaning we left 2 minutes late. Given the additional time allowed due to leaf fall I was sure we won't make that up. Actually we did to my surprise. May be the leaves are not so bad today. They don't have to be. Contrast that with the 8.02 from Woking your Waterloo which has no leaflet allowances and again was late into Surbiton today.

It's not easy running trains but you think they would try not to timetable such conflicting movements. As we left a train was pulling into platform 1 so I don't know if they could swop the 2 around as the platform 1 train arrived later. Perhaps that causes problems when that train is timetabled to depart. It's not easy.

Of course it may be that the working timetable expects the trains to be out of the way from each other. I've not been able to check real train times yet as my phone, being cheap, keeps crashing the browser when I visit the detailed page. Memory issue. Pubically timetable speaking though there is a clash.

There is another thing I've wondered. The SWT services trains via cobham and bookham are timetabled to leave earlier all day and every day. However fast services into London are only timetabled to leave earlier in the morning. Does anyone know why fast services are not affected by leaves as much during the day compared to slower services? Interestingly nothing is done on the Aldershot branch at all. Could that be due to the existing long wait at Aldershot by trains the direction of Alton?

Interestingly Southern don't do anything for their few services from and to Guildford. Those leaving at their usual time.

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[Tomnick]

0805 was, as you suggest, probably the public arrival time for the conflicting movement - TRUST shows it booked to arrive at 0802 (but it was three minutes late this morning). Probably better to live with the slight delay so caused, than to start swapping things around and introduce more conflicts later on. That's not to say that there aren't conflicts between schedules though - usually STP/VSTP, but often rather more complicated to work around!

Fast trains are, presumably, less affected by leaf-fall as they don't stop anywhere near as often - a stopping train picking up a delay of less than half a minute approaching or departing each station, on the other hand, will quickly be running a few minutes late.

 

[infobleep]

Thanks for your reply Tomnick. So are leaves the biggest problem when trains stop and/or start? If so that's interesting. I didn't know that.

 

[edwin_m]

So long as the train keeps rolling there isn't a problem. Acceleration and braking is when the train relies on friction between the wheel and rail.