Up and Down lines in UK

[Bow Fell]

Hooton is another one;

To Liverpool - Up Chester
From Liverpool - Down Chester

To Chester - Up Birkenhead
From Chester - Down Birkenhead

 

[ComUtoR]

For example, the Thameslink core does so at Farringdon (IIRC).

In The Core you also get 'Southbound and Northbound' If your on 'the darkside', you can also say your North/South bound but when your 'Sowth of the river' Its Up/Down

 

[43066]

In The Core you also get 'Southbound and Northbound' If your on 'the darkside', you can also say your North/South bound but when your 'Sowth of the river' Its Up/Down

I still can’t get used to going “down“ when I’m heading north, and “up” when I’m heading south!

 

[pdeaves]

Any train running a circular service (e.g. the various permutations available on South Western; Merseyrail loop) swap from being 'down' to 'up' (or v.v.) at some point in their journey.

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

Confusingly up and down can also switch over, so that up becomes down and vice versa.

For example, the Thameslink core does so at Farringdon (IIRC).

Wilton Junction: The Down Westbury joins the Up Exeter to become the Up Main, the Down main becomes the Down Exeter / Up Westbury. I'd love to be able to blame Western exceptionalism but, fair dos, the
Westbury line was theirs first!
Pat

 

[Dr_Intoxicated]

The London tubes, several of which were American financed and controlled in their early days (the Yerkes era), adopted the US habit of referring to eastbound, westbound, northbound etc. I don't know if or when the Met was changed to this practice. On the Circle Line, old timetables refer to "Inner rail" and "Outer rail". In the USA itself, the great majority of railroads were oriented east to west, so they referred to eastbound/westbound tracks, though in some cases the line designation was not the actual compass direction of travel. It was easy to know which direction a given train was, since westbounds bore odd numbers and eastbounds even numbers.

Yes it leads to some oddities. On the tube it's possible to use either the north bound or southbound services to travel between Euston and King's cross, depending on whether one takes the Northern or the Victoria. Obviously at this point both lines are actually running West to East.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Hooton is another one;

To Liverpool - Up Chester
From Liverpool - Down Chester

To Chester - Up Birkenhead
From Chester - Down Birkenhead

Historically, the LNW/GW route was Up from Birkenhead (Woodside) to Chester.
However the Mersey Railway was Down from Liverpool Central to Rock Ferry.
The line designations were probably changed when electrification (and signalling) was extended to Hooton.

Chester is another odd one, as you go Up to Crewe and Euston, and also Up to Wrexham and Paddington (after a short stretch of Down from Chester to Saltney Jn).
Shrewsbury is similar - it's Down in every direction except towards Wolverhampton/Paddington.

The GC broke the rule about zero mileages from London.
Mileages started at Manchester London Road but it was Up to Sheffield and Marylebone (mp 205.77).
Except that some of the route was/is in Met/LU ownership with different mileages or designations between Quainton Road, Amersham and Harrow.

The Liverpool & Manchester has mileages starting in Liverpool, and was probably Down to Manchester originally, but the LNWR must have reversed that to Up, to make it consistent with its other routes towards Euston.
Lime St actually has two mileages out to Edge Hill, 0 towards Manchester, 193.37 from Euston via Runcorn.

 

[jopsuk]

Yes it leads to some oddities. On the tube it's possible to use either the north bound or southbound services to travel between Euston and King's cross, depending on whether one takes the Northern or the Victoria. Obviously at this point both lines are actually running West to East.

if you take an Eastbound Piccadilly line from King's Cross all the way to its terminus you'll be west of where you started.

But then that does save that train from starting as an Eastbound train from Uxbridge, becoming Southbound towards Acton, then Eastbound again, before taking a turn to Northbound. It is a geographically complex line in that regard, caring nothing for cardinal directions.

 

[S&CLER]

It may be helpful to know that almost all of the tables in the BR and later National Rail timetable book started with the down tables. There are one or two exceptions, I was told, but I can't recall what they are.

 

[DavidGrain]

This is an appropriate thread as I have recently been thinking about my local line, the Stourbridge Line. The Stourbridge Railway and the continuation, the Stourbridge Extension Railway, was built as a branch from the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway towards Birmingham. Therefore logically, the eastbound direction should be the down line with mileages from Paddington taken from Stourbridge Junction (the actual junction, not the station with that name). However it is the other way round with the down line running towards Stourbridge with mileages from Paddington via Birmingham. So trains from Birmingham come off the Down Stourbridge onto the Up Old Worse and Worse.

It does not really matter because the change from the down to the up (and v.v.) would have had to happen at either Stourbridge junction or Handsworth junction

 

[Senex]

Exeter St David's and Plymouth North Road were interesting. In both down L&SW trains ran through the station and over adjacent track in the opposite direction to down GW trains.

I think the Liverpool & Manchester was originally double mileposted, with a "From Liverpool" set and a "From Manchester" set.

The North Eastern measured from both York and Newcastle. On the line into York from the south many of us will still remember when out to Chaloners Whin there were the posts from zero in York towards Altofts Jn on the west side and the posts from King's Cross to York on the east side.

For the Midland, it's worth bearing in mind that the new mileposts always took the shortest direct route from St Pancras, so the Carlisle set ran down the Erewash Valley, via the Old Road to Rotherham, and round the Whitehall Curve in Leeds, and the Manchester sequence ran via Chaddesden and Derby South to North Jns. At Chinley North Jn the set coming via Derby met the set coming via the Erewash Valley, Dore South Curve, and the Hope Valley, and the shorter (Derby) set continued. It was all absolutely methodical.

There's a nice quotation from the Midland WTT for May 1856: "As it is convenient in the issue of instructions respecting Signal and Working Arrangements, to distinguish the different Lines of Rails by the terms UP and DOWN, and very essential that no ambiguity or misunderstanding should exist on the subject, the following information is given for the guidance of the Company's Servants. / These Regulations to come into operations n the 1st May, 1856." There follows a list of lines with down and up indicated for each, which is as one might expect with two exceptions: on the West Branch Derby to Birmingham is up, and further north Sheffield to Rotherham and Masbro' is up.

 

[edwin_m]

if you take an Eastbound Piccadilly line from King's Cross all the way to its terminus you'll be west of where you started.

But then that does save that train from starting as an Eastbound train from Uxbridge, becoming Southbound towards Acton, then Eastbound again, before taking a turn to Northbound. It is a geographically complex line in that regard, caring nothing for cardinal directions.

The Jubilee started off being northbound/southbound. When it was extended the original section stayed that way but the extension became eastbound/westbound.

 

[Taunton]

Those writing about it being a continuation of stage coach days are correct. If you read the classic book Tom Brown's Schooldays, about Rugby School and written around 1820, with a lot of references to stage coach travel to and fro, that uses the descriptions of Up and Down coaches, for to and from London.

 

[Deepgreen]

As a slight aside, I quite like a few of the possible station/platform nomenclatures that result from the convention - Feltham Up, Settle Down, Hever Up, etc. I may have been locked-down for too long!

 

[hexagon789]

The London tubes, several of which were American financed and controlled in their early days (the Yerkes era), adopted the US habit of referring to eastbound, westbound, northbound etc. I don't know if or when the Met was changed to this practice. On the Circle Line, old timetables refer to "Inner rail" and "Outer rail". In the USA itself, the great majority of railroads were oriented east to west, so they referred to eastbound/westbound tracks, though in some cases the line designation was not the actual compass direction of travel. It was easy to know which direction a given train was, since westbounds bore odd numbers and eastbounds even numbers.

France uses 'pair' and 'impair', the former is towards Paris, the latter away from. In Italy directions are even or odd. Even is north or westwards, odd south or eastwards.

 

[vlad]

In Italy directions are even or odd. Even is north or westwards, odd south or eastwards.

It's the same (or similar) in Russia, with trains given an odd or even number depending on route. Generally the higher the number the less important the train. On occasion, for example if the train changes direction, it'll also change number!

 

[Ianno87]

The best suggestion, by far, that I've ever seen is that it stems from the early days - possibly stagecoach days - when services in both directions were shown on a single table: locations listed down the page usually starting with the most important, thus trains going away from the most important place went Down the page and those going towards the most important places were read going Up the page.

I believe Spanish timetables are 'Acendante' (Up the page) and 'Decendante' (Down the page)

 

[6Gman]

Honestly I think, in hindsight, it would have been better to use a town in the normal direction of travel.

So instead of the Up Fast it might be the London Fast.

It's a system which has worked for over a century. It ain't broke so why fix it?

And since placenames are already used to distinguish lines what would happen there?

 

[edwin_m]

France uses 'pair' and 'impair', the former is towards Paris, the latter away from. In Italy directions are even or odd. Even is north or westwards, odd south or eastwards.

We do have that in a sort of way, as the current standard for signal numbering (unless it's changed recently) requires even numbers for Up direction signals and odd for Down. Some older signaling schemes don't comply though.

 

[Tomnick]

It's a system which has worked for over a century. It ain't broke so why fix it?

And since placenames are already used to distinguish lines what would happen there?

Indeed. Place names are increasingly used to distinguish lines as areas of control increase in size, thus it's likely that (e.g.) "Up Fast" will refer to two distinct lines on different parts of the workstation (so will often become "Up <place> Fast" instead). Up and Down is absolutely fine thanks!

 

[London Trains]

Yes it leads to some oddities. On the tube it's possible to use either the north bound or southbound services to travel between Euston and King's cross, depending on whether one takes the Northern or the Victoria. Obviously at this point both lines are actually running West to East.

However the Victoria Line is actually reasonably correct here as the lines are running Northeast, not due East.

 

[hexagon789]

It's the same (or similar) in Russia, with trains given an odd or even number depending on route. Generally the higher the number the less important the train. On occasion, for example if the train changes direction, it'll also change number!

A number of countries which publicly list train numbers in their timetables seem to have such a pattern. Ireland does as well but you only see the train numbers now by looking up trains online, the timetables no longer carry the train identification numbers - odd trains went to Dublin, even ones away from

 

[hexagon789]

We do have that in a sort of way, as the current standard for signal numbering (unless it's changed recently) requires even numbers for Up direction signals and odd for Down. Some older signaling schemes don't comply though.

So there is some sense of an odd/even analogy. I'm trying to think if train reporting numbers have a similar pattern - even identifiers being one direction/odd the opposite or if even and odd can be mixed in both directions.

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

if you take an Eastbound Piccadilly line from King's Cross all the way to its terminus you'll be west of where you started.

But then that does save that train from starting as an Eastbound train from Uxbridge, becoming Southbound towards Acton, then Eastbound again, before taking a turn to Northbound. It is a geographically complex line in that regard, caring nothing for cardinal directions.

There was a bit of that on the LSWR. Fareham East Box was geographically to the west of West Box. East was always the Waterloo end of a layout, leading to East Junctions in many places (and West, North and South, as appropriate). The southern renamed the boxes, but not the junctions.
Pat

 

[Tomnick]

So there is some sense of an odd/even analogy. I'm trying to think if train reporting numbers have a similar pattern - even identifiers being one direction/odd the opposite or if even and odd can be mixed in both directions.

There’s no standard pattern for train reporting numbers. Sometimes the second character is the same for trains in both directions on a particular route, with one direction being odd numbers and the other being even numbers. More often than not, it isn’t. It wouldn’t work as a general rule anyway, with so many trains changing from Up to Down en-route.

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

Germany has something similar to Up and Down. I think 'Kilometre Richtung' is the direction from 0.0km, and I think 'Gegen Richtung' is towards 0.0km. I'm sure someone here will put me straight on that.
Pat

 

[MarkyT]

Germany has something similar to Up and Down. I think 'Kilometre Richtung' is the direction from 0.0km, and I think 'Gegen Richtung' is towards 0.0km. I'm sure someone here will put me straight on that.
Pat

I think that means in the direction of the (rising) kilometres, while gegen in this sense probably means 'against' or 'opposed to' (the rising kms).

 

[High Dyke]

We do have that in a sort of way, as the current standard for signal numbering (unless it's changed recently) requires even numbers for Up direction signals and odd for Down. Some older signaling schemes don't comply though.

That does seem to conform to things. I'm just looking at the signal panel here. There are a couple of instances where that 'norm' doesn't actually happen, but it is rare.

Indeed. Place names are increasingly used to distinguish lines as areas of control increase in size, thus it's likely that (e.g.) "Up Fast" will refer to two distinct lines on different parts of the workstation (so will often become "Up <place> Fast" instead). Up and Down is absolutely fine thanks!

Yep, I've got that on the panel I'm working tonight. The dividing line is the signal box. Whilst the line designation remains unaltered (i.e. Down - Down and v.v.) the respective place names are used either way.

Someone mentioned about the actual direction a train arrives, which may be the opposite to the line designation. We see that at Sleaford. A train travelling from Lincoln to Peterborough on the 'Joint Line' is an Up service, but arrives/departs Sleaford on the Down line, and vice-versa. Train Register booking also correlates to that.

 

[LAX54]

I was wondering why it is that on the ECML that the line going Northwards up towards Scotland is called Down line and the line going Southwards down towards London is called Up line.

UP to London
Down from London.


Scotland: Up to Edinburgh
Down from Edinburgh.

But of course with the changes and take-overs through Railway history, some that are still Up & Down, may seem wrong now !

 

[Andyjs247]

The direction convention for lines that run East West is not always clear cut. Around Manchester, Up is typically towards Manchester eg from Hull and Leeds via Huddersfield is Up.

As mentioned up thread the ex GC lines via Woodhead applied different logic however. Up was away from Manchester so that from Sheffield via Retford and Gainsborough continues Up to Grimsby and Cleethorpes. From Woodburn Jn via Rotherham Central to Aldwarke Jn is Up also as is Swinton to Doncaster. The Up direction then continues from Marshgate Jn through Scunthorpe to Wrawby Jn to Cleethorpes.