What's the longest timetabled wait you've encountered or experienced on a train?

riceuten · 23 Jul 2019

Something we occasionally get in the UK are a timetabled pause at the station, either for timekeeping purposes, or to allow connections to and from the train (and a crew change, on occasion). With long distance trains over 12 hours being something of a rarity here in the UK, my thoughts drift to the European or continental experiences of the same. My own personal longest (voluntary and timetabled) stay was a couple of hours at Salzburg Hbf on the sleeper, which ensures you arrive in Munich at a reasonable hour (6am). On my travels, I encountered a 6 hour timetabled wait at Bucharest Gara de Nord with a train from Istanbul in Turkey to Chishinau in Moldova (though as I recall this train was usually 5-6 hours late arriving in Bucharest in any case). I remember someone telling me that the old Paris to Moscow train had something like a 12 hour wait in Berlin.

Notwithstanding gauge changes and similar operations, what's the longest timetabled wait you've encountered or experienced on a train?

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Merseysider · 23 Jul 2019

Diverted East Coast trains often spend a while in Waverley - eg the 0925 KGX to Inverness has 36 minutes in Edinburgh and the southbound has 23.

The Riviera also has some hefty waits - eg 64 minutes at Exeter and 34 at Plymouth.

TfW trains routinely wait for a while in South Wales - eg 17 minutes in Swansea on the 1931 MAN to Fishguard.

Their splitting and joining at Machynlleth means 15 minute waits at times.

The Caledonian Sleeper also has to wait in Edinburgh due to all the attaching - 21 minutes tonight for example.

CrossCountry are notorious for it - their timetable would fall apart otherwise. 10 minutes in Brum is common, and you'll often get another wait elsewhere - eg they treat you to 16 minutes in Bristol on the train down to Newquay.

And of course, any train at all run by Grand Central will result in an unannounced two hour wait somewhere, at some point in your journey, waiting for a bus.

smsm1 · 23 Jul 2019

The Sundays 1252 Liverpool Lime Street to Norwich service waits in Nottingham for 18 mins: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C84445/2019/08/04/advanced

dutchflyer · 23 Jul 2019

This is the INTernational branch, so does the UK qualify for it?
You should also be more precise-or perhaps have more knowledge: the cases you mention surely are not a through train, but what is called through-carriage, which is shunted in the time from train 1 to 2. This also happens often in Russia/Ukrayna etc. with several hours wait at that stop.
Long timetabled waits for trains are indeed more common in shorter overnight trips which stay somewhere in the midst to allow for not too unsocial arrival hours-or does long time standing there also count? Best known case for now is the Budapest-Praha-some cars are detached and go on straight to arive (very) early, the sleepers etc. wait in Breclav and are then attached to a later train with mroe civilised arrival hour.

30907 · 23 Jul 2019

dutchflyer said:
Best known case for now is the Budapest-Praha-some cars are detached and go on straight to arive (very) early, the sleepers etc. wait in Breclav and are then attached to a later train with mroe civilised arrival hour.

That has changed, and the whole Budapest-Praha portion sits at Breclav for several hours. It is beaten by the single "long night" (Langschlaefer in German) sleeper that runs from Bratislava to Kosice, providing a service for intermediate stations. Total journey time eastbound is some 13 hours, of which 7 are spent at Zilina.

MarcVD · 23 Jul 2019

Not exactly a wait, but... Before the electrification of the east cost line between New Haven and Boston, there was a night train from Boston to Washington and vv, named The Night Owl. In both directions, the train left the station around 10 PM to arrive around 6 AM the next day. But the train pulled into the station as early as 7 PM, and upon arrival, would stay in the station until 9 AM. This allowed travellers to begin their night way before the train would start rolling, and/or to stay in bed a few hours more after the train arrival.

Closer to us, in 2011, when I did my transsib experience, I boarded a train named "Vlatva", if I remember well, coming from Prague, and serving Varsaw Central around 10 AM. It then moved on to Warsaw East, where it paused for something like two hours, before moving on to Terespol, Brest, and, after the bogie change, Moscow.

I also remember being stuck for two hours on the train Moscow-Taskent, at the Kazakh-Uzbek border station. Apparently this long delay was absolutely not exceptional, although not timetabled. It must be even worse still on the Moscow-Dushambe train, still going through Turkmenistan...

riceuten · 24 Jul 2019

MarcVD said:
Not exactly a wait, but... Before the electrification of the east cost line between New Haven and Boston, there was a night train from Boston to Washington and vv, named The Night Owl. In both directions, the train left the station around 10 PM to arrive around 6 AM the next day. But the train pulled into the station as early as 7 PM, and upon arrival, would stay in the station until 9 AM. This allowed travellers to begin their night way before the train would start rolling, and/or to stay in bed a few hours more after the train arrival.

Closer to us, in 2011, when I did my transsib experience, I boarded a train named "Vlatva", if I remember well, coming from Prague, and serving Varsaw Central around 10 AM. It then moved on to Warsaw East, where it paused for something like two hours, before moving on to Terespol, Brest, and, after the bogie change, Moscow.

I also remember being stuck for two hours on the train Moscow-Taskent, at the Kazakh-Uzbek border station. Apparently this long delay was absolutely not exceptional, although not timetabled. It must be even worse still on the Moscow-Dushambe train, still going through Turkmenistan...

I’ve been subject into involuntary border delays - 2 and a half hours at Curtici in Rômania in the 1990s once when they went through the entire train with a thin toothed comb, ostensibly to deal with drug smuggling but actually it took that long to extract the bribes from the hundreds of people smuggling household goods from Lököshaza in Hungary. I had a similar delay at Ruse on the Romanian border in Bulgaria on the same trip, but this time because of a broken down engine.

Cloud Strife · 25 Jul 2019

MarcVD said:
Closer to us, in 2011, when I did my transsib experience, I boarded a train named "Vlatva", if I remember well, coming from Prague, and serving Varsaw Central around 10 AM. It then moved on to Warsaw East, where it paused for something like two hours, before moving on to Terespol, Brest, and, after the bogie change, Moscow.

There's a good example with the Wrocław-Lviv sleeper train, which sits around for varying amounts of time at the border depending on the time of arrival in the direction of Lviv. Unfortunately, common sense still hasn't prevailed with this train, so border checks are conducted in the middle of the night and it's impossible to get a good night's sleep in the PL-UA direction. The sensible option of getting the sleeper cars to depart Wrocław/Warsaw slightly earlier so that the stock can be connected / border controls completed before 11pm just isn't happening, and Ukraine is also completely unwilling to carry out border controls at Lviv station on arrival.

gordonthemoron · 25 Jul 2019

The Munich-Hamburg DB Talgo sleeper used to stop in a siding for about 90 minutes somewhere between Hanover & Hamburg

DanTrain · 27 Jul 2019

I’ve had probably 2 hours in Winnepeg on The Canadian service, timetabled for more (had to skip the interesting looking Human Rights museum!) but we were running several hours late (apparently not unusual). This is for a full crew change at roughly the half-way point of a nearly 4 day journey so is hardly unreasonable!

Requeststop · 27 Jul 2019

In Australia, The Indian-Pacific, on it's journey from Sydney to Perth, has a scheduled stop at Adelaide of 6 hours 35 minutes. It is for excursions if you so want to do them.

Travelling in the opposite direction Perth Sydney, there is only a short break for 2 hours and 55 minutes.

Gordon · 1 Aug 2019

The Canadian has a few long timetables stops (eg 3 hours in Jasper)

Some Amtrak trains hang around for a bit at some stations

Back in 2013 the Clermont Ferrand - Nimes local train (67400 diesel load 4 UIC/USI 1960s coaches) paused at Langogne in the Massif Central for 'arret buffet' of around 40 minutes, a throwback to Victoria times !

.

MarcVD · 2 Aug 2019

Not long, but weird : in Belgium, around 1980, in some places, you could find trains pausing for 10 minutes or so, for no apparent reason. Turns out that those stops already existed more than 10 years ago, before the end of steam, to take water, and were carried out in diesel times, by people who did not know their purpose... All of that disappeared with the extensive rework of schedules that took place in 1984.

Gordon · 2 Aug 2019

MarcVD said:
Not long, but weird : in Belgium, around 1980, in some places, you could find trains pausing for 10 minutes or so, for no apparent reason. Turns out that those stops already existed more than 10 years ago, before the end of steam, to take water, and were carried out in diesel times, by people who did not know their purpose... All of that disappeared with the extensive rework of schedules that took place in 1984.

Wierd but common. I remember that happening all over Poland in the early 1990s as diesel took over from steam.

Tom B · 3 Aug 2019

Even during the normal timetable, Aberdeen HSTs sit for a good 10-12 minutes at Waverley I think?

Only been on the sleeper 3 times - but seem to recall stops at wcml stations for a while.

rick9525 · 9 Aug 2019

The Texas Eagle I traveled on from Chicago had around 5 hours wait in San Antonio as the through carriages are detached then reattached to the Sunset Limited for onward travel, in my case to El Paso, to LA.

Bletchleyite · 9 Aug 2019

As you mention sleepers, for a UK example the Night Riviera (which I have used) hangs around for:

Reading - 11 mins
Taunton - 12 mins
Exeter - 1hr 4 mins
Plymouth - 29 mins
...presumably so as to avoid silly-early arrivals and allow it to slot into the timetable nicely as a (quite popular) commuter service.

The advantage of this was that I probably got the sum of those times of kip! (I can't sleep well on a moving vehicle).

scotrail158713 · 9 Aug 2019

Tom B said:
Even during the normal timetable, Aberdeen HSTs sit for a good 10-12 minutes at Waverley I think?

Only been on the sleeper 3 times - but seem to recall stops at wcml stations for a while.

Yeah you’re right with that. The Northbound Chieftain sits in Waverley for about 15 minutes as well.

Tom B · 9 Aug 2019

Bletchleyite said:
As you mention sleepers, for a UK example the Night Riviera (which I have used) hangs around for:

Reading - 11 mins
Taunton - 12 mins
Exeter - 1hr 4 mins
Plymouth - 29 mins
...presumably so as to avoid silly-early arrivals and allow it to slot into the timetable nicely as a (quite popular) commuter service.

The advantage of this was that I probably got the sum of those times of kip! (I can't sleep well on a moving vehicle).

Is part of it not to allow extra time for diversions, TSRs etc which are more likely owing to overnight works etc? Saves redoing schedules if there's a load of recovery time in the schedule anyway, and like you say otherwise it'd be silly early to the destination.

DanTrain · 9 Aug 2019

XC sit in Reading for about 20 mins on their Southampton service, presumably for pathing although it is a bit irritating!

xotGD · 10 Aug 2019

Isn't the British winner the Royal Train, which sits in a random place for an extended period overnight before a morning arrival in time for the walkabout and ribbon cutting.

What's the longest timetabled wait you've encountered or experienced on a train?

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