[OMGitsDAVE]

A new BBC report says that East Coast is the least punctual train company, according to Network Rail.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11444412

[DaveNewcastle]

I'm going to jump in to EC's defence on this.
As the BBC article notes, most of the dealys were attributable to infrastructure issues.

Operating so many long-distance services so frequently every day (incl the 560 mile London-Inverness journey), EC are exposed to a very high risk of failures in the NR infrastrucure.
By way of contrast, there will be other TOCs (with relatively short track distances to cover), whose delays are entirely of their own creation, and other TOCs whose delays will be attributable to rolling stock issues (arguably a responsibility shared with DfT).

[paul1609]

During the summer I've been using rail between Ashford International and Inverkeithing on business. Whilst there have been inevitable delays due to infrastructure most of mine have been down to sloppy operating proceedure and poor regulation.

In about 5 journeys north during this summer no trains have arrived on time or within my official connection at Waverley.

I think 1 of the trains was advertised as ready to board 15 mins before departure time whilst 2 didnt start boarding till well after departure time. In one case without any announcements it appeared as one train had been cancelled as 400 people tried to get to customer information nearly 15 mins after scheduled it was suddenly announced as boarding on a platform where there had been train for at least 30 mins!

The service is still hampered by far too many calls at stations in the North East many of whom seem to attract very little custom. In my opinion no off peak London to Edinburgh services should stop at Peterborough, Doncaster, Darlington or Durham.

With the execption of Durham stops at all these stations seem to incur a huge time penalty. Darlington seems to be the worst offender where the average express trains seems to start getting signal checked about 10 miles out. Eventually you are bought to a stand just outside the station so a 2 car pacer can be let in to your platform in front of you. Eventually you trundle over some extremely speed restricted turnouts off the mainline into the station arriving 12 mins late when you left York on time. To make matters worst Darlington never seems to have more than a dozen passengers joining or leaving the train.

I'm back on Easyjet for the autumn, the new franchisee really does needs to get to grips if it wants to attract business passengers from air.

Nationalised East Coast no thanks!

[blue sabre]

Originally Posted by paul1609

During the summer I've been using rail between Ashford International and Inverkeithing on business. Whilst there have been inevitable delays due to infrastructure most of mine have been down to sloppy operating proceedure and poor regulation.

In about 5 journeys north during this summer no trains have arrived on time or within my official connection at Waverley.

I think 1 of the trains was advertised as ready to board 15 mins before departure time whilst 2 didnt start boarding till well after departure time. In one case without any announcements it appeared as one train had been cancelled as 400 people tried to get to customer information nearly 15 mins after scheduled it was suddenly announced as boarding on a platform where there had been train for at least 30 mins!

The service is still hampered by far too many calls at stations in the North East many of whom seem to attract very little custom. In my opinion no off peak London to Edinburgh services should stop at Peterborough, Doncaster, Darlington or Durham.

With the execption of Durham stops at all these stations seem to incur a huge time penalty. Darlington seems to be the worst offender where the average express trains seems to start getting signal checked about 10 miles out. Eventually you are bought to a stand just outside the station so a 2 car pacer can be let in to your platform in front of you. Eventually you trundle over some extremely speed restricted turnouts off the mainline into the station arriving 12 mins late when you left York on time. To make matters worst Darlington never seems to have more than a dozen passengers joining or leaving the train.

I'm back on Easyjet for the autumn, the new franchisee really does needs to get to grips if it wants to attract business passengers from air.

Nationalised East Coast no thanks!

Darlington has connections with Cleveland and the South of County Durham, Doncaster has connections with South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, you are happy for these communities to loose a connection to London? or at least for them to have an extended journey time (which seemingly is your complaint, ironic huh?)
Oh sorry I forgot, you are from the South of England so clearly more important than us Northerners, apologies I should know my place.

[tbtc]

Bring back National Express....

[sprinterguy]

Darlington is a very important interchange hub for the Teesside and County Durham area. Whilst the time penalty required to call there, caused by there only being one through platform in each direction (It is true that just about every train I travel on northbound gets stopped on the approach to Darlington) as well as the very slow approach turnouts, is regrettable, reducing the number of London trains calling there is not the answer.

Durham, on the other hand, I think could see a reduced London service: With a half hourly Crosscountry and hourly Transpennine service, and no opportunities for onward connections to other areas, I think that savings could be made with the East Coast services by only stopping those trains that terminate/originate at Newcastle, and having the anglo-scottish services run through: There would still be an hourly Edinburgh train, and all the current Aberdeen and Inverness HSTs already pass through non stop.

[Pumbaa]

Originally Posted by blue sabre

Darlington has connections with Cleveland and the South of County Durham, Doncaster has connections with South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, you are happy for these communities to loose a connection to London? or at least for them to have an extended journey time (which seemingly is your complaint, ironic huh?)
Oh sorry I forgot, you are from the South of England so clearly more important than us Northerners, apologies I should know my place.

I'm a Northerner, and Paul spends more than enough time up north so has more than enough experience on which to base his opinion, and I agree with him.

Doncaster is London served by Leeds trains, HT and GC, and northwards services by XC. Maybe 1tp2h to Edinburgh is sufficient. The Glasgow trains run through anyway. Darlington should not have every train call there, it wouldn't hurt to take it down to 1tph.

[blue sabre]

Originally Posted by Pumbaa

I'm a Northerner, and Paul spends more than enough time up north so has more than enough experience on which to base his opinion, and I agree with him.

Doncaster is London served by Leeds trains, HT and GC, and northwards services by XC. Maybe 1tp2h to Edinburgh is sufficient. The Glasgow trains run through anyway. Darlington should not have every train call there, it wouldn't hurt to take it down to 1tph.

Which wasn't his suggestion. If you reread the post the idea was to stop ALL off peak services from stopping there.
Reduced service is different and would still mean the communities that are servied by the stations still have a link to the Capital.

[ajax103]

One proposal to do would to limit the number of Edinburgh/Glasgow services calling at Durham, Darlington and instead ensure more Newcastle services are available which seeing as East Coast stop calling at Glasgow in the new timetable means the set or two which goes onto Glasgow can instead be used on the Newcastles.

The vast majority of Scottish services would call Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Newcastle, Berwick upon Tyne then Edinburgh and onto the Scottish stations.

Connections would be made at hub stations such as Peterborough, Doncaster, York and Newcastle thus hopefully improving the timekeeping which isn't always their fault.

For example, a Cross Country/FGW HST had trouble in Devon this week where it couldn't get above notch 3 so because of that, it had a knock on effort of making a Leeds to Kings Cross service late, this is why East Coast like the other Long Distance InterCity Operators have hard work keeping to the timetable.

Anyway, dropping Scottish trains from Peterborough - how dare you!

[ralphchadkirk]

paul1609 - and you're qualified to decide what is sloppy operating procedure and poor regulation?

[OMGitsDAVE]

Thing is, Darlington is a very important transport hub for us Northerners as mentioned above. Even not stopping there your train would have a delay as you would have to be put on to the avoiders anyway, STILL going over the Middlesbrough lines, so its pretty much 6 & 2x3's!

[aleksander]

Peterborough also seems sometimes underestimated as a transport hub. It is the best connection point from East Anglia to the North-East avoiding London. That is why the new 'Eureka' timetable which has less stops at Peterborough is a bad thing in this respect.

[91101]

Originally Posted by ralphchadkirk

paul1609 - and you're qualified to decide what is sloppy operating procedure and poor regulation?

I dunno if he is, but I am, and I can tell you the following: so much of East Coasts current problems are to do with internal issues with their ops teams and with their fleet. Reliability on both HST's and 91's has plummeted. The IC225 sets were always top of the MP5MD (Miles per 5min delay attributable to engineering problems with the train) tables for InterCity trains. NatEx took over and this started to plummet and has got worse and worse as time as gone on, hence the EMT set and XC sets that are popping up from time to time. (There was a serious consideration to hire the Pretendylino for a Leeds diagram at one point during the summer!)

Regarding poor regulation, at the moment you will be unlikely to suffer a regulating decision AGAINST an East Coast service, the DfT have put pressure on at both ends, both with Holt and her clan of management but within Network Rail to get PPM figures up at East Coast, this has translated to a local level where signallers along the route are being told to regulate to a policy of screw Northern, TPE, and FCC - Tory East Coast comes first!

Oh and its worth remembering that from with Eureka all Anglo-Scottish trains at XX:00 off KGX will be fast to York.

DaveNewcastle, your comments regarding short distance local operators delays being their own fault is something of a fallacy. Regardless of status as regional, intercity or London and South East, their is an pretty accurate average with all delay being roughly split betweeb 60% Network Rail on TOC, 30 % TOC on Self and 10% TOC on TOC. This model varies from region to region, Merseyrail for example suffers very very little TOC on TOC delay, whilst FCC's Thameslink service suffers it signifigantly, directly interfacing with about 5 different companies.

[ajax103]

91101:

The signallers being told to priorise East Coast services is nothing new, one signalbox we both know very well are experts at it as it's the norm there to give prioity to East Coast rather then FCC.

[91101]

Oh thats old school mentality, "InterCity" goes first, but this is a more recent instruction issued accross the London North Eastern NWR route, so much so that individual signallers have been pulled when they have NOT given priority to EC!