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Norwich to London timetabling and performance

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TheBigD

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745007 currently allocated to 1P15 - 0740 NRW-LST.
 
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dk1

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1P15 is very leisurely timed south of Witham. It's often a case of running at 80mph with the 90/DVT sets to save frequent braking at restrictive signals. Slow running Forest Gate through to Stratford can also be expected. Normally runs into Liverpool St around 09:22 a couple of minutes early on GBTT times as waits for the platform to become available too.
 

Railperf

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1P15 is very leisurely timed south of Witham. It's often a case of running at 80mph with the 90/DVT sets to save frequent braking at restrictive signals. Slow running Forest Gate through to Stratford can also be expected. Normally runs into Liverpool St around 09:22 a couple of minutes early on GBTT times as waits for the platform to become available too.
Yeah the Braintree is ahead at Stratford..so i guess you catch that up! And in front of that is a Southend with Romford call. Trying to route the IC is like try to get a thread through the eye of a needle.
 

Railperf

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Yeah the Braintree is ahead at Stratford..so i guess you catch that up!
1P15 is very leisurely timed south of Witham. It's often a case of running at 80mph with the 90/DVT sets to save frequent braking at restrictive signals. Slow running Forest Gate through to Stratford can also be expected. Normally runs into Liverpool St around 09:22 a couple of minutes early on GBTT times as waits for the platform to become available too.
Best Ipswich to London time on our database is 50 mins 3 sec. Almost impossible today except on a Sunday!
 

dk1

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Best Ipswich to London time on our database is 50 mins 3 sec. Almost impossible today except on a Sunday!
I've done it in 53 on the 07:40 & that was with waiting outside Liverpool St for a platform. Delayed 8 mins at Ipswich & no less than four GEs either delayed or put out of the way to give me greens. Most exhilarating trip I've ever done.
 

Railperf

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Yeah..they could put 1f23 into p1 at Shenfield...and possibly get 2k37 to omit romford call and into p10 at SRA to allow 1p15 to get past on p9. Any down service due p10 could go 10a? But where do you get past 1f25? Prob needs to be kept looped at Witham.
 
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Railperf

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I've done it in 53 on the 07:40 & that was with waiting outside Liverpool St for a platform. Delayed 8 mins at Ipswich & no less than four GEs either delayed or put out of the way to give me greens. Most exhilarating trip I've ever done.
That's a train i would like to have been on!
 

Railperf

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What ruins the mainline service is the sluggish performance of the 321s. If 360s were running the GE services to a timetable that matches their performance rather than the pedestrian 321s..a lot of the services in front could be timed so much quicker and out of the way!
 

F Great Eastern

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53 minutes was done on a 360 demo run during the day, I reckon the could have got under that on a Sunday with a clear run - was the belief at the time that there was around another 30-40 seconds at least on the table on ideal conditions.
 

Railperf

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17:30 back to Liverpool Street losing time because 1y51 Ipswich is 10 late but signaller chose not to loop it at Witham even though it stops there.

So we are going to be crawling along until at least Shenfield or worse still Liverpool Street unless they stick it P1 at Shenfield and let us past. Worse still it makes calls at Hatfield Peverel, Chelmsford, Shenfield and Stratford. This is how the Intercity service gets ruined!!
 

ashkeba

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17:30 back to Liverpool Street losing time because 1y51 Ipswich is 10 late but signaller chose not to loop it at Witham even though it stops there.
Signaller is probably working at full tilt and both have 1xxx codes so it is not an easy quick decision that a 1Y should be looped to let a 1P past, is it?
 

Railperf

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Signaller is probably working at full tilt and both have 1xxx codes so it is not an easy quick decision that a 1Y should be looped to let a 1P past, is it?
Who ultimately decides? Is it GA control?
 

captainbigun

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Signaller is probably working at full tilt and both have 1xxx codes so it is not an easy quick decision that a 1Y should be looped to let a 1P past, is it?

Why should it be looped at all. The GE is a heavily utilised commuter railway. Norwich isn’t special, why delay anyone else?!

I’d put Norwich to the back of the queue, especially the Norwich in 90 nonsense.

NR manage the infrastructure, it’s ultimately their role to manage the traffic.
 

dk1

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Why should it be looped at all. The GE is a heavily utilised commuter railway. Norwich isn’t special, why delay anyone else?!

I’d put Norwich to the back of the queue, especially the Norwich in 90 nonsense.

NR manage the infrastructure, it’s ultimately their role to manage the traffic.
It's just common sense to loop it briefly if it is possible.
 

Malcolmffc

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It's just common sense to loop it briefly if it is possible.

as is so often the case, the “common sense” approach may not be the correct one. What if the driver is due a relief? Or the train is timetabled to make a connection with another service if it gets looped?
 

F Great Eastern

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as is so often the case, the “common sense” approach may not be the correct one. What if the driver is due a relief? Or the train is timetabled to make a connection with another service if it gets looped?

Ex Anglia Railways sections of the franchise have a superirority complex who believe that the Norwich line should come before anything else, this has been the case since the late 90s and early 2000s - Michael Schabas didn't exactly hide this! :)
 

dk1

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as is so often the case, the “common sense” approach may not be the correct one. What if the driver is due a relief? Or the train is timetabled to make a connection with another service if it gets looped?
It takes 2-3 minutes. What about the driver on the Intercity? Same applies.
 

ashkeba

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Ex Anglia Railways sections of the franchise have a superirority complex who believe that the Norwich line should come before anything else, this has been the case since the late 90s and early 2000s - Michael Schabas didn't exactly hide this! :)
Only the "flagship" Norwich line. Some ex-Anglia lines seem often treated in a cavalier manner by HQ perhaps even worse than the old GE, such as Ipswich-Peterborough.
 

GB

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Think you will probably find ARS makes most of the decisions if the signaller hasn't had a chance to intervene....and I don't think its clever enough to route into any other platform than what is booked.
 

Railperf

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Why should it be looped at all. The GE is a heavily utilised commuter railway. Norwich isn’t special, why delay anyone else?!

I’d put Norwich to the back of the queue, especially the Norwich in 90 nonsense.

NR manage the infrastructure, it’s ultimately their role to manage the traffic.
Trying to put aside any Norwich vs GE rivalries / feelings etc, ultimately you have a situation where a train fault caused a down Ipswich to be terminated at Colchester, and turned around and sent back to London. Someone took the decision to send it back out on the main line at that time. And anyone knowing the timetable would have known it was right in the path of another faster train with fewer stops. So I ask, why wasn't the now late train (1Y51) put into P1 at Witham to let the other train through?
In the end , two services ended up late instead of an on-time Intercity, and a single late semi fast - which to be fair have incurred the same delay anyway when it was put into Shenfield P1.
Whatever type of train i'm on, i hope the controllers do their best to manage the delays sensibly. In this case, it didn't seem a sensible decision as it unduly created more delay to one of the trains.

Anyway it highlights the fact that the infrastructure is lacking. The GEML really needs 4 tracks south of Colchester. just as the A12 really needs 3 lanes South of Ipswich, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon!
 

steve_brown

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Think you will probably find ARS makes most of the decisions if the signaller hasn't had a chance to intervene....and I don't think its clever enough to route into any other platform than what is booked.

...is the correct answer.

ARS (Automatic Route Setting) can make a regulating decision at a converging location, but once two trains are following one another it will not intervene, and cannot intervene because Mk I ARS can't deviate from a train's booked platform. The signaller can override the ARS but once this is done the train is out of ARS control and has to be manually signalled for the remainder of its schedule. Sounds like something from the stone age now, but bear in mind that ARS was written and implemented by BR Research in the early 1980's and the logic has remained largely unchanged ever since.

The "Luminate" overlay, as deployed on GWML, allows signallers to re-platform and regulate trains without removing them from ARS control, i.e. it re-programs the ARS version of the timetable.
 

Dave1987

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Anglia - GE rivalry aside. I've known a lot of delays on the GE side of things (like 2-3 hours worth of delay mins) be caused by one late running intercity being given absolute priority. GEML infrastructure south of Colchester is not ideal at all but it is how it is and it's highly unlikely to change. This all needs to be put in perspective though. If the Clacton to London at XX.33 is held at Colchester for a late running Norwich to London at XX.30 at Colchester then that is then late for its connection at Witham for the Braintree line. It is also then late for its path at Shenfield etc. The solution could be to put even more padding into GE timetables so that no matter how much GE services are delayed by Anglia services they would always be able to make up the time. But if you have GE services constantly sat waiting time then GE passengers are going to get extremely fed up at their slow services into London. It already takes as much time to get from London to Marks Tey as it does for the Ni90 or the "East Anglian" to get from London to Ipswich which is a considerable distance more. If GE passengers get the feeling that their services are not the priority and that their services are slow then they are highly likely to just reject the train and travel by car. And then bang goes the main source of revenue for the entire GEML franchise. It is a fine balancing act but everyone needs to remember that the main sources of revenue are from the likes of Chelmsford, Colchester, Witham, and the Southend branch.
 

306024

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Control are not robots and one person can be juggling many issues at the same time, especially in the current GA climate. To make a relatively split second decision on regulating is simply not always possible, especially in ARS areas once the route has been called. Must admit I thought Liverpool St IECC could put a train back into ARS after a manual intervention, but happy to be wrong.

Unless you’ve actually sat in the Controllers chair and done the job it is difficult to understand, but then that is true of many jobs.
 

steve_brown

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Must admit I thought Liverpool St IECC could put a train back into ARS after a manual intervention, but happy to be wrong.

I might be wrong on this, not been to Liverpool Street IECC in a long while and every ARS installation is a little bit different.

I concur that signaller and controller workload is easy to underestimate for those who haven't spent time in control environments, even when things are running smoothly.
 

trebor79

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I might be wrong on this, not been to Liverpool Street IECC in a long while and every ARS installation is a little bit different.

I concur that signaller and controller workload is easy to underestimate for those who haven't spent time in control environments, even when things are running smoothly.
I agree. Try the Simsig Liverpool Street simulation and things can get very messy very quickly if you start altering stuff from the ARS.
My train was held outside Liv At waiting for a platform for a good 5 mins this morning. I could see on Traksy that every possible platform we could get to was occupied whilst there were others that were empty. At first you think WTF did they put us on this route, but you can't know what impact doing something else would have had.
 

LAX54

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Trying to put aside any Norwich vs GE rivalries / feelings etc, ultimately you have a situation where a train fault caused a down Ipswich to be terminated at Colchester, and turned around and sent back to London. Someone took the decision to send it back out on the main line at that time. And anyone knowing the timetable would have known it was right in the path of another faster train with fewer stops. So I ask, why wasn't the now late train (1Y51) put into P1 at Witham to let the other train through?
In the end , two services ended up late instead of an on-time Intercity, and a single late semi fast - which to be fair have incurred the same delay anyway when it was put into Shenfield P1.
Whatever type of train i'm on, i hope the controllers do their best to manage the delays sensibly. In this case, it didn't seem a sensible decision as it unduly created more delay to one of the trains.

Anyway it highlights the fact that the infrastructure is lacking. The GEML really needs 4 tracks south of Colchester. just as the A12 really needs 3 lanes South of Ipswich, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon!

If the Up Inter-City is 3 mins late or more at Manningtree, then the Clacton is supposed to go ahead from Colchester, that is the regulating policy, however we get many calls to say keep the Norwich running.
Regulating in general now is not as simple as it was, a Class 1 is not always a 'real' Class 1, and may be all Stations, and a Class 2 can be fast, it is all down to the Romford stop... 2 yes, 1 no, so a train maybe
Liv St, Romford, Colchester, but will be a Class 2, Yet another that maybe Stratford, Shenfield Chelsmsford, Wtham, Kelvedon, Marks Tey, Colchester will be a Class ! !
As for ARS making odd moves, Colchester has S-ARS, which can be just baffling sometimes, and if you have 2 with the same headcode within say 18 hours, it will, and does, throw it's toys out of the pram !
 

LAX54

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Control are not robots and one person can be juggling many issues at the same time, especially in the current GA climate. To make a relatively split second decision on regulating is simply not always possible, especially in ARS areas once the route has been called. Must admit I thought Liverpool St IECC could put a train back into ARS after a manual intervention, but happy to be wrong.

Unless you’ve actually sat in the Controllers chair and done the job it is difficult to understand, but then that is true of many jobs.

True, Colchester Signaller can have up to 10 or 12 trains on his panel at any one time, also has to deal with Line Blocks in between trains, and remember to get the CCTV's down in time, plus a multitude of other calls coming in for various things. Even 'in the Country' the Haughley/Norwich Panel used to be quite quiet, but as the services increases each year, it is become as busy as an 'commuter' area !
As for a regulating headache..Ipswich ! With the Freightliner loco changes, that have to be threaded from Up Side to Down Side and vice versa, and not (well try not to) delay anything else, not always successful !
 
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