Badly Timed Connections (Reality Or Conspiracy?)

142094 said:

Trains off the S+C often don't connect well with the Tyne Valley services either - there is often a +1/0/-1 connection, so if the train from Leeds is even slightly delayed, you have no chance. The only good thing is that the Leeds train is booked to arrive at the bay right next to the Newcastle service.

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Yes, I did the Tyne valley once and found the same. It was nice to do the route, but I wouldn't bother again unless the timetable improved. Quite surprising really considering Carlisle has two bay platforms which are well located for these routes and the double track section to Petteril Junction can hardly be over busy.

Also, one might expect there to be a market for local traffic between intermediate stations towards Appleby and those towards Hexham.

30907 said:

But the southbound Ivanhoe is constrained by pathing at Nottingham. You'd have to shift the whole timetable around 15mins earlier to work both ways at Nottingham, so you'd simply lose your southbound connection to gain a northbound one. And that's without looking at any other pathing conflicts - let alone Newark Crossing...

Or extend the turnround times at Leicester, which takes another unit (and crew?). Or accelerate the trains...

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The frustrating thing is that it used to work with the old (a few years ago now) timetable on the MML when the Ivanhoe ran 5 minutes later.

Is it completely impossible to slow the second Sheffield train down a little so that it connects at Loughborough or East Midlands Parkway?

Given the amount of time it spends in Sheffield between trips there should be no problem with that - but there will be issues at Derby I am sure. Even then though a 10 minute delay to the current timings would not cause too many problems I do not think. I guess that all depends what connections would then be missed at Sheffield. The odd time I have managed the connection it did seem to sit outside Sheffield, implying there is catch up time built in that could be taken advantage of, but again with Sheffield it could be anything. With public information and from my experience I would not like to say either way.

From a very quick look, I think there's potential for it to run a few minutes later north of Leicester, to arrive at Derby after the XC unit to B'ham leaves rather than before, then taking its current path from there. That's only based on today's 0947 (WTT) departure from L'boro though - I've not checked for conflicts with freight paths on any other hours or any other days, and might have missed something anyway. The biggest downside would be the increased journey time on the London - Derby part of the journey due to the lengthened dwell time at either Leicester or Loughborough - ideally the connection would work (and I accept that it's a bit of a pain to work around otherwise), but is it worth it for the relatively few passengers from the intermediate stations?

Some interesting examples on here.

Some are probably just sod's law (e.g. given the number of arrivals/departures at places like New Street/ Leeds each hour it'd be impossible to get everything to connect).

The Carlisle example surprised me as in my head I assumed that the same bays were used by Newcastle and Leeds services so were shared between them - I didn't realise that they were timed to miss each other by such a narrow margin. And with the same TOC too. However I gues both services are determined by paths elsewhere (Newcastle to Metro Centre/ Leeds to Shipley), so there's not a lot of room to wiggle a couple of minutes out of them to get them to connect.

Invincibles said:

The frustrating thing is that it used to work with the old (a few years ago now) timetable on the MML when the Ivanhoe ran 5 minutes later.

Is it completely impossible to slow the second Sheffield train down a little so that it connects at Loughborough or East Midlands Parkway?

Given the amount of time it spends in Sheffield between trips there should be no problem with that

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The "second" Sheffield - London service is already slow - it can leave Sheffield eight minutes after the "original" departure but arrives in the capital half an hour later.

Slowing it down another five minutes would mean it left at virtually the same time as the "fast" departure.

yorksrob said:

Yes, I did the Tyne valley once and found the same. It was nice to do the route, but I wouldn't bother again unless the timetable improved. Quite surprising really considering Carlisle has two bay platforms which are well located for these routes and the double track section to Petteril Junction can hardly be over busy.

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In fact, although it may appear to be double track when viewed from Carlisle station, there is a shortish single line section between London Road Junction and Carlisle South Junction (at the south end of the station.)

tbtc said:

The "second" Sheffield - London service is already slow - it can leave Sheffield eight minutes after the "original" departure but arrives in the capital half an hour later.

Slowing it down another five minutes would mean it left at virtually the same time as the "fast" departure.

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I prefer the version that leaves at xx47 as that one still gets the same path south of Derby but allows connection from the train from Manchester/Liverpool.

Going the other way it arrives just ahead of the fast London as well doesn't it (thinking this based on the slow leaving Leicester around xx45 and the fast leaving 20 minutes later).

In some ways it is a shame they can not swap those two over so the earlier one is fast and the later one slow - though of course that messes up the longer meridian diagrams so can not be done.

Looks like that northbound connection will continue to be a source of frustration.

(Unless Leicestershire County Council find a big pot of money and open a few stations on the southbound MML and extend the Ivanhoe to Kettering - this would allow the recovery time to move south and allow the northbound to leave Leicester at xx20 instead of xx25 and that would work -- I know that is a very unlikely scenario)

I presume one big constraint on timing for Derby to Crewe and will be the fact that it has to cross both tracks of the Derby to Birmingham line on a flat junction. And with the junction in question being where it is you have to consider freight that bypasses Derby on the Trent to Stenson line as well as all the traffic to/from the Derby direction.

142094 said:

Trains off the S+C often don't connect well with the Tyne Valley services either - there is often a +1/0/-1 connection, so if the train from Leeds is even slightly delayed, you have no chance. The only good thing is that the Leeds train is booked to arrive at the bay right next to the Newcastle service.

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They don't connect well the other end either. I'm sure I remember arriving at Leeds on a service from Horton-in-Ribblesdale literally a minute before the Kings Cross train departed.

Lewisham2221 said:

The connections for the Crewe-Derby service are generally poor anyway. Usually arrive at Derby to see the Matlock-Notts train just departing (after sitting in the platform for about 10 minutes) whilst the arrival from Crewe then sits in the platform for 15-20 minutes.

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I also find that really annoying, especially as the Crewe-Derby service used to run through to Nottingham. You would also think that EMT would want passengers to be able to travel on their service to Nottingham rather than have to wait to travel on a following XC service.
If the Crewe-Derby service is not going to connect at Derby with the Matlock-Nottingham service it should be retimed to leave Crewe a few minutes later to enable connections at Crewe from the service from Scotland, which currently does not quite allow the minimum connection time at Crewe, even though it can usually be easily done with a simple cross platform connection if the Virgin train is on time. This results in it being very difficult to find Advance Tickets from Scotland to Derby and Nottingham by this route.