Failed Unit
Established Member
Hi,
Yesterday I was on the 1500 London Kings Cross - Edinburgh service. Because of all the issues in Retford the set was late into London so we didn't depart until about 1515.
A few questions, as to the casual passenger no attempt was made to recover the delay. In fact it was made significantly worse as we went along by things that could have go done differently.
The first thing was that the HST that was already in Kings Cross was used to form the 1508 London - York service, but understand this could be mileage / maintence related.
With the 15 minute delay we were therefore following the 1508 service, which we had caught up by Peterborough. Is there any reason why the fast service was not be allowed to overtake the stopping service until Retford? bearing in mind that it is 4 track until Grantham and such a move is used on to allow the 1800 London - Edinburgh to overtake the 1749 London - Leeds service? Because we were not allowed to over-take the 15 minute delay was now 30.
Upon arrival at York we then had the pleasure of following the TPE, Liverpool - Newcastle service, again needing to stop outside Durham and Chester-Le-Street stations. I know they are both class 1 and the TPE wasn't as late as the East Coast but not sure why we were not able to pass while the TPE was in platform at Durham to try and recover some of the delay. (again if we were allowed to pass at Peterborough we would have not experienced this issue anyway as we would be ahead of it anyway at York)
Net result over 40 minutes late into Edinburgh and lots of avoidable delay repay for VTEC to pay. Interested to know what this will be put down to? Would it be the Retford incident that made the inbound set late, or Virgin East Coast for using the set that was avaiable for another service or even network rail for not letting an express pass slower services?
There may be good reasons for all the above, but as a passenger, it was as if VTEC had given up on the service, once it is over 10 minutes late then does it make much difference it turns into 40? This isn't a pop at signallers (as East Coast could have said we don't care, just don't delay anything else - that I will never know)
Yesterday I was on the 1500 London Kings Cross - Edinburgh service. Because of all the issues in Retford the set was late into London so we didn't depart until about 1515.
A few questions, as to the casual passenger no attempt was made to recover the delay. In fact it was made significantly worse as we went along by things that could have go done differently.
The first thing was that the HST that was already in Kings Cross was used to form the 1508 London - York service, but understand this could be mileage / maintence related.
With the 15 minute delay we were therefore following the 1508 service, which we had caught up by Peterborough. Is there any reason why the fast service was not be allowed to overtake the stopping service until Retford? bearing in mind that it is 4 track until Grantham and such a move is used on to allow the 1800 London - Edinburgh to overtake the 1749 London - Leeds service? Because we were not allowed to over-take the 15 minute delay was now 30.
Upon arrival at York we then had the pleasure of following the TPE, Liverpool - Newcastle service, again needing to stop outside Durham and Chester-Le-Street stations. I know they are both class 1 and the TPE wasn't as late as the East Coast but not sure why we were not able to pass while the TPE was in platform at Durham to try and recover some of the delay. (again if we were allowed to pass at Peterborough we would have not experienced this issue anyway as we would be ahead of it anyway at York)
Net result over 40 minutes late into Edinburgh and lots of avoidable delay repay for VTEC to pay. Interested to know what this will be put down to? Would it be the Retford incident that made the inbound set late, or Virgin East Coast for using the set that was avaiable for another service or even network rail for not letting an express pass slower services?
There may be good reasons for all the above, but as a passenger, it was as if VTEC had given up on the service, once it is over 10 minutes late then does it make much difference it turns into 40? This isn't a pop at signallers (as East Coast could have said we don't care, just don't delay anything else - that I will never know)