Can platform staff hold a train (within reason)?

[AlterEgo]

Should for instance the 0834 have been held too? Ok, they were using adjacent platforms, but the theory still holds. How about the 0830 Paddington?

Neither of those are valid advertised connections at Temple Meads, the earliest valid connection off that train is 0835, as the station has a 10 minute minimum connection time.

 

[DanNCL]

Yes it could if that 1 minute on train 1 (the XC) creates other delays on other trains. At that point when you willingly put a 1 minute delay into the XC, you don't know what the repercussions may be.

I've seen a 1 minute delay total in excess of 100 minutes before!

You also have no idea what the 3 minutes will do to the service down the line with its various junctions, conflicts, other late running trains etc. This is especially true of a long XC service.

I think I perhaps worded it incorrectly. Of course 1 minute can (and often will) spiral into a much more significant delay, but staff shouldn't be stating that the company *will* be fined for that initial 1 minute delay as fact to passengers when they simply don't know for certain what would have happened had the train been delayed by that 1 minute at Temple Meads. It could have spiralled into a longer delay, but it could also have made that minute up by the time it got to Bristol Parkway.

 

[Horizon22]

I think I perhaps worded it incorrectly. Of course 1 minute can (and often will) spiral into a much more significant delay, but staff shouldn't be stating that the company *will* be fined for that initial 1 minute delay as fact to passengers when they simply don't know for certain what would have happened had the train been delayed by that 1 minute at Temple Meads. It could have spiralled into a longer delay, but it could also have made that minute up by the time it got to Bristol Parkway.

No perhaps not, but I imagine the dispatcher was caught a bit on their toes and tried to explain why the XC train had left on time. As I said, it is impossible for a dispatcher on the ground to know what will happen, and even Control staff can't predict how a 3 minute delay at one station could have an impact by the train gets to say Birmingham New St, there's so many variables.

As an exercise to explain how complex it can be to find out root cause of delays and the impact of knock-on delays it appears that 2K06 left Bristol TM 4L, which caused knock-on impacts at Avonmouth and then delayed the Severn Beach branch that morning - https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:G60046/2021-12-02/detailed#allox_id=0

 

[Taunton]

Gerry Fiennes, grand railway alumnus, had it right. In a similar situation there was a request to retime the departure to later. He refused, saying "The key is not to schedule the departing train later; it is to make the incoming one RUN TO TIME!"

And this is true. Every concern is shown above about making the departing train be punctual, and none at all to making the incoming train be punctual in the first place.

 

[Horizon22]

Gerry Fiennes, grand railway alumnus, had it right. In a similar situation there was a request to retime the departure to later. He refused, saying "The key is not to schedule the departing train later; it is to make the incoming one RUN TO TIME!"

And this is true. Every concern is shown above about making the departing train be punctual, and none at all to making the incoming train be punctual in the first place.

And what if that incoming one is late, because the previous working of THAT train was also late? More applicable to a metro service (like the Severn Branch is to be fair) but can cause ongoing problems if not dealt with by a service intervention of some sort.

 

[357]

That is generally the case. Many XC services travel through multiple bottlenecks - as an extreme example, the Edinburgh-Plymouths navigate Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, Leeds, Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Bristol and Exeter before getting to Plymouth. Keeping those trains to time is very, very difficult and it is not hard to see how two minutes can turn into five, then ten, and perhaps worse: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:G29276/2021-12-02/detailed#allox_id=0 (it's on time today though!)

Realtime Trains - 1S39 0627 Plymouth to Edinburgh

Realtime Trains is an independent source of live realtime running information for the Great British railway network.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Yesterday as an example, the train was delayed by 40 minutes at Derby, but by reaching its destination this had snowballed to 58 minutes.

This happens the same way when the delay is just a few minutes. Once the train loses its path, it loses its priority and trains running on-time will be put ahead of it.

A 3 minute delay waiting for passengers could mean further down the line a slow all-stations train that is running on time gets put in front, meaning the train can lose half an hour or more. All those delay minutes would be attributed to the dispatcher you spoke to who decided off his own authority to hold the train.

When control agree to hold a train - they will have looked at recovery minutes in the schedule and work out where the train will be back on time, and they also specify a maximum amount of minutes to hold the train by.

You also need to consider that many people on the train will have tight connections/missed connections as a result of them waiting for you and your wife.

It works the same way as if your flight is delayed due to awaiting passengers transferring from an arrival, quite often you will hear the pilots tell you they have lost their departure slot. This can then lead to further delays at the destination, as missing their arrival slot means that ground staff are not available for things like baggage handling and steps. This is why low cost airlines do not sell any through-tickets.

 

[Taunton]

And what if that incoming one is late, because the previous working of THAT train was also late? More applicable to a metro service (like the Severn Branch is to be fair)

It really is not the fault of the passengers that train operators schedule too-tight turnrounds (Brighton to Malvern with just a few minutes before returning to Brighton being an absolute classic)

 

[ComUtoR]

How would it work with DOO?

It will be different for each Driver and TOC involved.

PERSONALLY It is a matter of decision making and situational awareness. During the peak commuter times I am totally ruthless. I'm leaving on time as sharp as possible. If you miss by a fraction of a second I'm just gonna pull away and not give you a second thought. There may be times where there is gonna be flexibility. Bad weather, disrupted services etc and any degraded working and I'm gonna take any delay on the chin but I'm still gonna be as tight as possible.

During the day I tend to be more flexible. A minute here or there isn't an issue and there are places where I can make time back. The passenger dynamic also changes. Passengers are slower to board, have prams, kids, Grandparents etc. There is less of a concern where trains are late because many aren't making connections and are travelling for leisure purposes.

We have a few stations that are notorious for people running for trains. With a high frequency turn up and go service you tend to have passengers always heading down the ramp to the platform so they will run if they see a train. Waiting here can be worse than just closing up and going. You are always gonna be waiting and will just get caught out each time. Lock em up and go, there's a train close behind.

Ok so 3 minutes rather than 5 (quite like to know why some TOCs like to claim they're "on time" up to 5 minutes in that case), but the point still stands that a 1 minute delay on its own won't cause the operator to be fined, and staff certainly shouldn't be telling passengers otherwise.

Trains were 'On Time' if there arrived at destination within 5 minutes. 'On time' has/is being replaced by 'Right time Railway' where you must be within 1 minute at each booked stop'

As to a single minute..... What most people don't see is the number of impact minutes per delay. 1 minute to a single train might impact another at a Junction and then cause delay minutes to stack up. This has been discussed multiple times and is why single minute delays are treated seriously.

 

[Spartacus]

Neither of those are valid advertised connections at Temple Meads, the earliest valid connection off that train is 0835, as the station has a 10 minute minimum connection time.

It's off my area so was going off standard values, but everything else still stands.

 

[norbitonflyer]

I had a similar altercation with a dispatcher at Newark Northgate who gave the right-away just as a late-running connection from Lincoln drew up at the other side of the island platform. Unlike Bristol, Newark is not a very busy station so he had no excuse for not knowing the Lincoln train was due, and as there is a clear view of approaching trains for at least a mile he could see it was coming. There were probably a hundred of us crammed in the 73-seat Class 153, most of whom wanted the London connection. The doors of one train closed simultaneously with those on the other opening.

The dispatcher was immediately surrounded by a very angry crowd. His excuses included:
"Have to stick to the timetable" (the timetable said if I left Lincoln at 1615 I would get to London at 1830 - how would they manage that now?)
"Not fair to delay everyone already in the train" - so delaying 70 people for an hour is better than delaying maybe 300 people for two minutes? - indeed RTT revealed that the train actually arrived at Kings Cross two minutes early!
"Not our fault - blame EMT" - yes, that's right: hit your "competitor's" bottom line by making them pay out on Delay Repay

Actually EMT were not their competitor on that route. Legally, they were a subcontractor: I had bought the ticket from East Coast (the operator at the time), so my contract was with them. If a subcontractor falls down on the job, it is the responsibility of the main contractor to sort it out, not the client.

The subcontract position was particularly clear in this situation - in the original Eureka timetable, there should have been a direct train at the time I needed to travel, but EC had given themselves permission to not run the full franchised service.

 

[Acey]

Personally if I have an important appointment to make I always aim to leave home earlier than necessary to make sure I'm there on time,even if it means arriving early and having to wait around a bit,gives me time to collect my thoughts etc ,also much less stressful in the long run,it's not a perfect system and one should make allowances for the unexpected !

 

[Western Sunset]

Ironically, that service from Severn Beach was the only late arrival around that time this morning...

Don't platform staff have access to train running at BTM? I know at Westbury there is an illuminated track diagram showing train running etc.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

It really is not the fault of the passengers that train operators schedule too-tight turnrounds (Brighton to Malvern with just a few minutes before returning to Brighton being an absolute classic)

Which is why that is being discontinued from the forthcoming timetable change, instead terminating at Worcester Foregate Street.

 

[Western Sunset]

Further irony. Said XC arrived over a minute early at Cheltenham and had to wait time...

 

[stephen rp]

I was quickly off a rail replacement coach at Oxford from Banbury (itself delayed waiting a driver) and caught the waiting southbound connection. They wouldn't wait for the rest of the passengers off the same coach.

And I had an argument with the Abelio bloke at Armathwaite during the S&C landslip who let the shuttle to Appleby go without waiting for the bus from Carlisle the shuttle was intended to connect with.

Maybe we are all conditoned by Gordon and Thomas and the "guaranteed connection"...

 

[Spartacus]

Further irony. Said XC arrived over a minute early at Cheltenham and had to wait time...

But if it had left Bristol more than a minute or two late, which would have been likely had the OP known it was to be held, then it would almost certainly have delayed at least 3 trains in the Filton and Parkway areas. The delay to that first train doesn't have to be long or long lasting to delay others.

 

[stephen rp]

Realtime Trains - 1S39 0627 Plymouth to Edinburgh

Realtime Trains is an independent source of live realtime running information for the Great British railway network.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Yesterday as an example, the train was delayed by 40 minutes at Derby, but by reaching its destination this had snowballed to 58 minutes.

This happens the same way when the delay is just a few minutes. Once the train loses its path, it loses its priority and trains running on-time will be put ahead of it.

A 3 minute delay waiting for passengers could mean further down the line a slow all-stations train that is running on time gets put in front, meaning the train can lose half an hour or more. All those delay minutes would be attributed to the dispatcher you spoke to who decided off his own authority to hold the train.

When control agree to hold a train - they will have looked at recovery minutes in the schedule and work out where the train will be back on time, and they also specify a maximum amount of minutes to hold the train by.

You also need to consider that many people on the train will have tight connections/missed connections as a result of them waiting for you and your wife.

It works the same way as if your flight is delayed due to awaiting passengers transferring from an arrival, quite often you will hear the pilots tell you they have lost their departure slot. This can then lead to further delays at the destination, as missing their arrival slot means that ground staff are not available for things like baggage handling and steps. This is why low cost airlines do not sell any through-tickets.

"Once the train loses its path, it loses its priority and trains running on-time will be put ahead of it." Even if it makes more sense to try and get the late-running train back on time. Worse when they're different TOCs and fares are financing an army of lawyers to apportion blame for delay.

 

[Spartacus]

"Once the train loses its path, it loses its priority and trains running on-time will be put ahead of it." Even if it makes more sense to try and get the late-running train back on time. Worse when they're different TOCs and fares are financing an army of lawyers to apportion blame for delay.

Experience and evidence shows trying to get a heavily late train back on time usually creates more trouble than it's worth. Instead of one late train, or a few, you end up with many. That's just one thing the hardworking (and often under resourced) rail staff in delay attribution have been able to show. You can't work out how to get trains to run on time, or as many on time as you can, if you can't explain why they were late in the first place.

 

[Western Sunset]

Never realised that XC service reversed at B'ham.

 

[Ex-controller]

Absolutely no chance in my experience would this sort of connection be maintained.

XC services run roughly hourly don’t they? The message would be get the next one. Connections like this may be held in areas of irregular service, but not a service which runs frequently, and certainly not at a major station where platforms are in very regular use. Only circumstances where it might be likely is if it was a last connection of the day or a significant gap until the next available service.

And it’s certainly not the platform staff responsibility. They should have been more understanding in their response to the OP, but unless they get the word from the Station Duty Manager, or their operations control, they can’t hold the train off their own back. As for control decisions, in an ideal world yes, a 2 minute delay would be perfectly reasonable, but all it takes is for one such decision to cause, say, 300 minutes of delay in total for them to shy away from it again.

 

[AlterEgo]

"Once the train loses its path, it loses its priority and trains running on-time will be put ahead of it." Even if it makes more sense to try and get the late-running train back on time. Worse when they're different TOCs and fares are financing an army of lawyers to apportion blame for delay.

There are no lawyers involved in delay attribution and it is not an especially expensive cottage industry. The main objection to it is whether Schedule payments fundamentally support the objectives of the railway.

 

[riceuten]

In 50-odd years of taking trains - it's nice when connections are maintained, but I don't expect it. I've seen multiple people bundled into taxis at no little expense to the TOC because a final connection wasn't held, and would probably have saved the TOC time, effort and money had they done so, but whether the driver was running out of hours, I don't know.

Germany has a strange situation (lots of trains held waiting for connections there) - an ICE will wait for another ICE connection, but not IC and below. Likewise IC trains will wait for IC connections, and ICE connections, but not below...and so on.

 

[Bluejays]

In an effort to convince my wife of the virtues of rail travel and get her out of her car, I offered to accompany her on this morning’s 0810 GWR service from Clifton Down to Temple Meads and ensure she made her connection - the 0835 XC service to Edinburgh.

The GWR service is scheduled to arrive BRI at 0825 but was delayed because the train coming in the opposite direction was late (it’s a single track railway between Redland and Stapleton Road).

We arrived at 0834 and made a dash for it worthy of Usain Bolt but missed the XC by approximately 5 seconds.

I protested to the staff on the platform that it would have been reasonable for the XC to have been held in these circumstances. Just a 30 second hold would have been sufficient for 7 people to have made the connection.

I felt this was especially egregious given the next northbound XC was not scheduled to depart until 0932 due to XC’s covid timetable.

Cue a litany of excuses:

1. “If ‘they’ don’t tell us it’s late [the GWR Severn Beach service] then we don’t know.” - it was not clear to me who ‘they’ are. Surely platform staff are monitoring live arrivals and departures?

2. “The control room in Swindon is responsible for holding trains, not platform staff.” - really?

3. It’s two different train companies and therefore not a valid connection.” - really?

4. “The train company is fined £150 per minute for delayed departures so we can’t hold trains” - really?

5. You should have asked the train manager on the GWR service to request a hold for you.” - but I thought you couldn’t hold them anyway?

Nothwithstanding the contradictory nature of the above excuses, I feel that all that was required in this situation was a little bit of (dare I say it?) ‘common sense’.

Had there been someone overseeing arrivals and departures who was on the ball, and had they taken action by instructing platform staff to hold the XC for 1 minute, a lot of pain could have been avoided and a few folks wouldn’t have been late for work.

I was disappointed with the attitude of the staff on the platform who did not want to take ownership of the problem and simply deflected the blame onto others.

My question to this forum is, is there anything the staff or station management at BRI could/should have done in this situation? Or are they just following the operational rules and regulations of the railway?

Who is in charge of overseeing connections at major interchanges like BRI and what responsibilities/powers do they have?

Needless to say, my wife will be back in her car tomorrow, clogging up the M5.

Have you seen how many trains are leaving and arriving at Temple Meads at that time of the morning? The dispatchers will be going from train to train with very little time in between, they will also be dealing with constant queries from passengers. They've also got no way of knowing how many passengers requiring a connection would be on any particular train.

I'm sure that if somebody on the incoming train had spoken to the guard, they would have given control a ring to enquire about a hold.

 

[XAM2175]

And this is true. Every concern is shown above about making the departing train be punctual, and none at all to making the incoming train be punctual in the first place.

The concern shown to the punctual departure of the second train here is what helps to prevent it becoming a delayed arrival for somebody disembarking down the line

 

[Taunton]

So.

The passenger has first to realise themselves the train is late compared to its schedule down the line from where they boarded, have an understanding of any recovery time or not, etc.

The passenger then has to take it on themselves to go and find the guard, who with units multipled together may be wholly inaccessible.

The passenger also has to know their guard could do something about maintaining a tight connection, a service which is not advertised anywhere.

The guard then has to try and get through to Swindon Control and request this.

In this case Swindon Control now has to try and get through to Cross Country control in Birmingham, because apparently despite GWR being in charge of dispatch at Bristol, they are not - if it's a different company's train.

Cross Country Control then has to try and get through to someone (their guard?) to say hold the train.

That's not going to all work in a few minutes, is it?

Let me tell you how it used to work in the 1960s on the Taunton-Minehead branch. The guard would notice passengers joining the train at Minehead with heavy luggage, or chat to the porter, that there were passengers connecting to The Devonian at Taunton. If delayed on the branch, the guard would shout to the platform porter at Bishops Lydeard (notice proactively, doesn't have to be told) "Tell 'em to hold the Devvy a bit, people for Leeds". The porter would phone directly to the Up platform inspector at Taunton (notice trusted to do this directly, no need to go through two levels of Control), who would send a porter down to the branch bay to assist with any luggage. All in, off a few minutes late. Full regulator, fireman shovels a bit more, back on time at Bristol. This wasn't Thomas the Tank Engine, it was how things were actually run then.

 

[norbitonflyer]

Personally if I have an important appointment to make I always aim to leave home earlier than necessary to make sure I'm there on time,even if it means arriving early and having to wait around a bit,gives me time to collect my thoughts etc ,also much less stressful in the long run,it's not a perfect system and one should make allowances for the unexpected !

Counsel of perfection. Sometimes you have two important appointments on the same day. The train I took should have given me ample time to get to my evening appointment. The only way I could have got an earlier train was by leaving the funeral I was attending before it started.

 

[Phil R]

Whilst sympathetic to the OP for the delay, a bit brave going for +10 with a rail sceptic in tow.

 

[The Planner]

Let me tell you how it used to work in the 1960s on the Taunton-Minehead branch. The guard would notice passengers joining the train at Minehead with heavy luggage, or chat to the porter, that there were passengers connecting to The Devonian at Taunton. If delayed on the branch, the guard would shout to the platform porter at Bishops Lydeard (notice proactively, doesn't have to be told) "Tell 'em to hold the Devvy a bit, people for Leeds". The porter would phone directly to the Up platform inspector at Taunton (notice trusted to do this directly, no need to go through two levels of Control), who would send a porter down to the branch bay to assist with any luggage. All in, off a few minutes late. Full regulator, fireman shovels a bit more, back on time at Bristol. This wasn't Thomas the Tank Engine, it was how things were actually run then.

Why are we comparing rail operations 60 years ago to today?

 

[Taunton]

Why are we comparing rail operations 60 years ago to today?

Because some people here need training in how to do the job properly.

 

[The Planner]

Because some people here need training in how to do the job properly.

Ah, the old "everything was better in the old days"