Lines with non-clockface timetables

telstarbox · 14 Oct 2013

Which lines have non-clockface timetables? Are they generally lines with a small number of services (less than 1 train per 2 hours)?

East Coast changed to a clockface timetable in May 2011 - were there any other main lines in recent years with irregular services?

RailUK Forums

Techniquest · 15 Oct 2013

How recent are we talking? ATW introduced the clockface timetable down the Marches and more in 2005 (I think, it could have been 2006). Not exactly recent but in the grand scheme of railways it could be considered so.

Absolutely tons of lines without a clockface timetable still exist in the UK, the most obvious example that came to mind was the Heart of Wales line. Not even close to a pattern there!

Liam · 15 Oct 2013

Everything in and out of Inverness. It looks like they have tried to do 1tph Inverness-Dingwall, but there are some big gaps, especially in the evening.

Aberdeen-Glasgow/Edinburgh isn't quite clockface. The trains tend to leave Edinburgh and Glasgow at the same time each hour, but arrival and departure from Aberdeen varies by a few minutes each hour.

Starmill · 15 Oct 2013

How far are we taking this? Knottingley to Goole? Serivces to and from Pontefract Baghill? The Whitby line? I guess you could argue some do have a pattern in a very abstract sense.

What about specific stations? Crewe - Stoke and Huddersfield - Mirfield with 2tph but at 5 - 55 min intervals?

IrishDave · 15 Oct 2013

One could perhaps argue that Southeastern's peak service out of Charing Cross and Cannon Street is not "clockface" - it conforms instead to a repeating 22-minute pattern, because the standard 20-minute pattern gains an extra train (and a 22-minute pattern is preferable to losing the only "blank path"). This gives rise to the 66-minute hour, which gives me a headache...

More seriously, though, there are plenty of lines which have a clockface timetable but lose it in the peaks - Chiltern, EMT and East Coast all spring to mind. Virgin at least keep most of the pattern in the evening peak, but their morning peak is all over the place. (By contrast, SWT keeps the clockface pattern running through both peaks, just with extra trains.)

swt_passenger · 15 Oct 2013

IrishDave said:
...By contrast, SWT keeps the clockface pattern running through both peaks, just with extra trains.

In terms of departure/arrival times from Waterloo, I'd pretty much agree.

But the devil is in the detail - on the Bournemouth route you end up with the odd situation of the normal departure times, i.e. xx05/35 and xx09/39 but particular services are now going to different destinations, and other trains start splitting and joining 'down-route'. The off-peak Poole service becomes a Portsmouth via Eastleigh in the peak, making that latter route half hourly.

So looked at from the Waterloo perspective it will seem clockface nearly all day, but as seen from Southampton the peaks are quite different to the day time service.

(Vice versa in the morning peak of course.)

tbtc · 15 Oct 2013

Its hard to draw the line between a non-clockface service (relatively frequent trains, but not at an easy-to-remember gap) and irregular (only a handful of trains a day, like the HOWL, so little need for them to be at the same interval).

I'd argue that most of the lines in Lincolnshire (east of the ECML, south of the Cleethorpes line) are in this grey area - the Skegness service is fairly regular at the Nottingham end but messy at the Skeg end - the Peterborough - Lincoln service is hourly at times, but with some chunks missing and then at different times of later hours.

There's also the "no trains for ages and then two in a short period of time" like Helsby - Ellesmere Port, but that's for different reasons.

swt_passenger · 15 Oct 2013

There's is a debate about what 'clockface' really means. Compare two of SWT's main routes...

Some would say that the Waterloo - Southampton route isn't actually clock face because although they are the same times every hour, the four departures are not 15 mins apart. And the two fast departures do not serve the same intermediate calls, ie Basingstoke or Woking but not both.

OTOH the Waterloo to Guildford part of the Portsmouth route probably would be deemed a pretty much ideal 4 tph clockface service, with departures at xx00/15/30/45...

But in both cases, the off peak service only provides a misbalanced 3 tph to the 'main destination' of Portsmouth or Southampton. So does a true 'clockface' timetable require all of the departures, arrivals, and intermediate calls to be spread round the hour the same way? Because if so there are very few true clockface timetables outside of metro type services...

Muzer · 15 Oct 2013

clockface to me means you can ignore the hour hand for most of the day

tbtc · 15 Oct 2013

swt_passenger said:
There's is a debate about what 'clockface' really means. Compare two of SWT's main routes...

Some would say that the Waterloo - Southampton route isn't actually clock face because although they are the same times every hour, the four departures are not 15 mins apart. And the two fast departures do not serve the same intermediate calls, ie Basingstoke or Woking but not both.

OTOH the Waterloo to Guildford part of the Portsmouth route probably would be deemed a pretty much ideal 4 tph clockface service, with departures at xx00/15/30/45...

But in both cases, the off peak service only provides a misbalanced 3 tph to the 'main destination' of Portsmouth or Southampton. So does a true 'clockface' timetable require all of the departures, arrivals, and intermediate calls to be spread round the hour the same way? Because if so there are very few true clockface timetables outside of metro type services...

Good question.

For me, it'd be about the same times each hour (however unbalanced services were within that hour).

Even light rail/ Underground struggle to have perfectly equal gaps between every service (like the way the ten minute Yellow service and half hourly Purple service fit around each other on Sheffield Supertram), but they are generally at the same times the next hour.

Going off topic, Aberdeen used to have some stupidly timed bus services, there was one route (number 11) every sixteen minutes - probably the least easy to remember timetable I've seen.

talltim · 15 Oct 2013

EMT Sheffield to London is definitely not clockface. Witness the 06:47; 07:41; 07:47; 08:47; 09:35: 10:47; 11:47; 12:47; 13:47; 14:35; 15:47 (Which skips Chesterfield); 16:35; 17:35; 18:35 pattern
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I thought this article was interesting when I read it a couple of years ago (as it happened on the 15:47 from Sheffield when I was going supposed to going to Chesterfield!)
http://www.passengertransportnetwor...cgi?tag=Taktfahrplan&blog_id=1&IncludeBlogs=1

AlexS · 15 Oct 2013

Nottingham to Lincoln - various departure times, presumably governed by the number of stops and the booked passing time over the flat crossing.

greatkingrat · 15 Oct 2013

The Worcester end of the Snow Hill lines is a regular 2tph, but the terminus seems to be picked at random from Shrub Hill or Foregate Street or both.

tractakid · 15 Oct 2013

I was recently discussing something with a friend- stations where not one service departs at the same minutes past an hour as another- regardless of direction or destination.

I present you Broomfleet. And I challenge you to find a station with more departures where this still applies.

http://brtimes.com/#!board?stn=BMF

43074 · 15 Oct 2013

The Cornish Main Line between London Paddington and Penzance is probably the only major route where clockface timetables do not apply (although Far South West departures leave Paddington at XX:06 the pattern West of Reading is somewhat more erratic).

Along the Dawlish Sea Wall the local service has irregular gaps of between 50 and 70 minutes between trains west of Dawlish Warren (e.g. Dawlish departures are at 11:16, 12:27, 13:24, 14:27 etc.) because of the need to allow faster London to Penzance services to overtake at Dawlish Warren.

West of Plymouth there is no clear pattern either. FGW departures are at:
07:02, 08:14, 09:21, 10:42, 11:20, 12:39, 13:11, 13:53, 15:12, 15:57, 16:29, 17:06 to Liskeard, 17:23, 17:55, 18:17 to Liskeard and 18:42 with origins including Plymouth, Exeter Central, Bristol Parkway and London Paddington via Berks and Hants or Bristol.

Also the Settle & Carlisle departures from Carlisle are not clockface either, but are roughly every 2 - 3 hours.

Mojo · 15 Oct 2013

The Severn Beach line in suburban Bristol doesn't have a clockface timetable in that trains always depart at the same time past each hour, but with one exception they do depart at the same minutes past each hour every other hour during the day when heading outbound. The frequency is 3 trains every 2 hours.

PHILIPE · 15 Oct 2013

Techniquest said:
How recent are we talking? ATW introduced the clockface timetable down the Marches and more in 2005 (I think, it could have been 2006). Not exactly recent but in the grand scheme of railways it could be considered so.

Absolutely tons of lines without a clockface timetable still exist in the UK, the most obvious example that came to mind was the Heart of Wales line. Not even close to a pattern there!

At the moment a clock face timetable on the HOWL is virtually impossible due to the crossing points in the "wrong" places. If you crossed at "A" you would discover that the next train in the opposite direction would still be in the section between "B" and "C" and so on.

WelshBluebird · 15 Oct 2013

FGW's Heart of Wessex line services certainly don't have a clockface timetable

Gareth Marston · 15 Oct 2013

Cambrian Coastfrom Machynlleth to Pwlleli, 1st UP and last DOwN on Cambrian mainline plus morning commuter train into Aberystwyth

button_boxer · 15 Oct 2013

talltim said:
EMT Sheffield to London is definitely not clockface. Witness the 06:47; 07:41; 07:47; 08:47; 09:35: 10:47; 11:47; 12:47; 13:47; 14:35; 15:47 (Which skips Chesterfield); 16:35; 17:35; 18:35 pattern

This "semi-fast" used to be a clock face xx:20 starting from Derby, which was extended back to start at Sheffield a few years ago. It still fits into its clock face path from Derby southwards but is less regular at the Sheffield end, presumably to thread it around freight paths that pre-date the Sheffield extension.

I used to catch the 18:35 to Derby occasionally (if I'd missed the 18:27) and it always seemed to trundle along as if it had all the time in the world.

Tetchytyke · 16 Oct 2013

tbtc said:
There's also the "no trains for ages and then two in a short period of time" like Helsby - Ellesmere Port, but that's for different reasons.

Similar on the Airedale line.

From Leeds to Shipley, it is every 15 minutes.

From Shipley to Leeds, it is 4tph at 09/15/39/45.

nw1 · 16 Oct 2013

tbtc said:
Its hard to draw the line between a non-clockface service (relatively frequent trains, but not at an easy-to-remember gap) and irregular (only a handful of trains a day, like the HOWL, so little need for them to be at the same interval).

I'd argue that most of the lines in Lincolnshire (east of the ECML, south of the Cleethorpes line) are in this grey area - the Skegness service is fairly regular at the Nottingham end but messy at the Skeg end - the Peterborough - Lincoln service is hourly at times, but with some chunks missing and then at different times of later hours.

There's also the "no trains for ages and then two in a short period of time" like Helsby - Ellesmere Port, but that's for different reasons.

Or my local example, St Denys to Southampton Central, xx30 and xx31, aargh! A suburban station can surely do better than this, the old timetable a few years ago was much more even. The Sunday service is ironically much better. I could go into a rant about the terrible slots for connections given to the services which stop at St Denys, meaning a 35 min walk to Parkway or Central from home is often quicker, but I won't.

Rhydgaled · 16 Oct 2013

tbtc said:
Its hard to draw the line between a non-clockface service (relatively frequent trains, but not at an easy-to-remember gap) and irregular (only a handful of trains a day, like the HOWL, so little need for them to be at the same interval).

I suppose you could say the Fishguard service is irregular, like HOWL, rather than just 'non-clockface'. However, the Fishguard example does show that having an irregular service run to a clockface pattern (with trains at the same points each hour, on the hours it actually runs) could be useful. That reason is connections with other services, which do run on a clockface service. Trying to make the vaugely-clockface bus service round here connect with the all-over-the-shop Fishguard rail service would be a pain, for example. Perhaps that's why they don't really seem to have bothered to make the buses connect.

Muzer said:
clockface to me means you can ignore the hour hand for most of the day

What about the Cambrian main line? Same number of mintues past the hour (in most cases, there are exceptions) but only every two hours (the odd hours, as far as Aberystwyth departures go).

12CSVT · 16 Oct 2013

I'm surprised Bletchley to Bedford isn't a clockface timetable, with some gaps of up to 90 minutes, given that it is the same two units shuttling up and down all day.

greatkingrat · 16 Oct 2013

Rhydgaled said:
I suppose you could say the Fishguard service is irregular, like HOWL, rather than just 'non-clockface'. However, the Fishguard example does show that having an irregular service run to a clockface pattern (with trains at the same points each hour, on the hours it actually runs) could be useful. That reason is connections with other services, which do run on a clockface service. Trying to make the vaugely-clockface bus service round here connect with the all-over-the-shop Fishguard rail service would be a pain, for example. Perhaps that's why they don't really seem to have bothered to make the buses connect.

A few years ago, Fishguard was the only perfectly clockface station in the country - trains every 12 hours exactly, 7 days a week!

dk1 · 16 Oct 2013

12CSVT said:
I'm surprised Bletchley to Bedford isn't a clockface timetable, with some gaps of up to 90 minutes, given that it is the same two units shuttling up and down all day.

Suppose that's for crew PNBs.

33056 · 17 Oct 2013

Watford Junction to St. Albans Abbey, runs about every 40 minutes - not a lot else you can do without re-instating the loop at Bricket Wood (or elsewhere)

tractakid · 18 Oct 2013

12CSVT said:
I'm surprised Bletchley to Bedford isn't a clockface timetable, with some gaps of up to 90 minutes, given that it is the same two units shuttling up and down all day.

Thankfully, the time I missed it was the shorter gap of 40 minutes I had to wait!

61653 HTAFC · 20 Oct 2013

Ormskirk-Preston was always a pain for this, especially as there's a perfectly serviceable loop at Rufford but not enough DMUs to provide a more frequent service. Of course the loop being where it is would mean a long turnaround at both ends- not a major issue at Ormskirk (bar the inefficiency) but particularly a problem for blocking platforms at Preston.

30907 · 20 Oct 2013

61653 HTAFC said:
Ormskirk-Preston was always a pain for this, especially as there's a perfectly serviceable loop at Rufford but not enough DMUs to provide a more frequent service.

Or not enough passengers to justify a 2-train service?

Lines with non-clockface timetables

Established Member

RailUK Forums

Veteran Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Forum Staff

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member