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Connections - or lack of....!

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xtradj

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Tomnick said:
The Bidston example sounds a little unbelievable - since the Wrexham service must leave from the same platform, the DMU surely can't be booked to leave the reversing siding for a good couple of minutes after the EMU has left the station, with a few minutes more before it departs in service? That'll leave your EMU standing out on the main line for a good while - probably to the point where it'll delay the return working! A delay of five or ten minutes I can understand; two sounds a little less reasonable.

In general, there's lots of good reasons why connections can't always be held (particularly at a busy station like Doncaster or York, where the connection could then be left standing a few minutes more to let a couple of expresses go by!), as well as a few valid but not-quite-so-good reasons (arguments over which TOC pays the delay minutes etc.!) - that's the modern railway though!

Incidentally, how do you define a 'booked connection'? I'm probably as guilty of using this word as the next man, but what does it mean? I know there's 'valid' connections (where you've got at least the minimum connection time for that station), and connecting services are sometimes shown in public timetables based on this information. What makes it a booked connection though?

its true.. if the merseyrail service is late by 1/2 mins then it stops just outside bidston, waits for the arriva trains to arrive and depart, then the merseyrail pulls in.. its a joke!!

wouldnt mind but the arriva is once every hour. spoke to some fella today and he agrees its a joke.. the borderlands train is nearly always late and sometimes never arrives, and because the borderlands stations are unmanned ( except shotton, bidston and wrexham general ) you never know how the train is performing, and national rail website can only ( no report ) because there is no recognition on the line except the 3 listed stations

merseyrail are talking of electifying the line to Neston, but i doubt it, not enough people use the line as its far to unreliable
 
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yorkie

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Table 52 said:
It's advertised in the timetable to make journey planning easier for the customer, it in no way constitutes a binding contract to hold the train.
No, but they are bound to get you there, by whatever means necessary - taxi if need be.
 

Tomnick

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yorkie said:
No, but they are bound to get you there, by whatever means necessary - taxi if need be.
Yep, and a taxi/following train is quite likely to be cheaper and cause less inconvenience to the majority, than delaying trains to await other trains!
 

Table 52

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yorkie said:
No, but they are bound to get you there, by whatever means necessary - taxi if need be.

Yep, providing there are no more reasonable connections (e.g. it's the last train of the night) then yes. But this would apply whether a service was advertised as connecting or not, so long as you stuck to the recommended change times.

Given that a reasonable number (over 75% I would hope) of trains do run to time, it makes sense to advertise trains as connecting as in the majority of cases, they will be. My point is that if a train is delayed, the other service does not have to be held. And in the majority of cases, should not be held.
 

yorkie

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Tomnick said:
Yep, and a taxi/following train is quite likely to be cheaper and cause less inconvenience to the majority, than delaying trains to await other trains!
I think the cost of taxis is underestimated, I've heard of some shocking taxi bills for the sake of saving a few seconds delay.

As for whether a majority of cases connections should be held or not - I guess not as most trains are relatively high frequency, but when the next train is not for nearly 2 hours (which is what we're talking about in this thread, remember) and you are talking about a local stopper awaiting an express train - then the local should wait, clearly. and control clearly agreed with this as they agreed to hold the train, but this request was ignored (by signallers? the guard? control at the other TOC? we'll probably never know...)

The fact is that some branch lines are very different to the high-frequency lines you get in major centres such as London. At end of the day there are some that clearly should be, and there can be no debate about those. For example I once witnessed a Falmouth Dock train held awaiting an HST. If it was not held it would have run almost empty, and as it was held several dozen people (maybe as many as 100!) made the connection. It would be madness for it not to be held, and frankly if it wasn't the railway would deserve to lose many customers, which would be very sad indeed.
 

O L Leigh

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yorkie said:
But if it's 8 minutes at York, then it is a valid connection so it is a connecting service.

Never heard of that one before. Where is this stated?

The conditions of carriage require the railways to get passengers to their destination, but does not limit them to a particular means of transport (e.g. not necessarily a train), nor does it guarantee the passenger a seat or that they will arrive within a given timescale. So, if you miss your train you just have to wait for the next one. If there isn't a "next one", you may complete your journey by some other means. This may seem hard on them, but these conditions have been around since the days of BR.

Despite your laudable sentiments, there is no requirement for local services to connect with mainline ones. In addition, as I and others have outlined already, there is no incentive for the TOC's to provide such "connections" due to the way in which each company's performance is measured and penalties decided. I would also go back to my very first post in this thread and say again that we just don't know precisely what happened on that particular day. I suspect that the intention was there but, in coordinating everything between the three companies and making sure that everyone knew what was going to happen, it seems likely that there was a communication issue somewhere. To take the railway industry as a whole to task over this seems excessive, especially when no-one knows exactly what happened on that day.

To concede a point of principle, I would have to agree that services ought to be better integrated wherever this is possible. However, I'm not sure that you appreciate what a delicate balancing act this actually is. If you decide to hold a Harrogate service to "connect" with a delayed GNER or Virgin service at York you may end up delaying it's return working, meaning that passengers wanting to "connect" with GNER/Virgin at York miss their services due to arriving late back from Harrogate. Also, precisely which services do you decide to delay for "connections"? Some services can end up "importing" delays onto other areas of the network. For example, it used to be the case that the stock forming Cambridge to Ipswich services then worked on the Felixstowe or East Suffolk Line. Holding the service at Cambridge would mean a delayed arrival at Ipswich, disruption on the GEML while the signaller found it a path in amongst the mainline services and late departure of the train's outbound working from Ipswich. At what point is it worth holding a train and when do you decide that it's going to just create further problems?

one TN
 

yorkie

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one TN said:
Never heard of that one before. Where is this stated?

one TN
In the NRT. It's 5 minutes unless otherwise stated, York is 8 minutes (for example).

Some stations have different values depending on the operators.

There are also values for some inter-station/cross london links which are listed at the front of the NRT (the longest being Fenchurch St to Marylebone at a whopping 68 minutes!!)
 

O L Leigh

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yorkie said:
In the NRT. It's 5 minutes unless otherwise stated, York is 8 minutes (for example).

Some stations have different values depending on the operators.

There are also values for some inter-station/cross london links which are listed at the front of the NRT (the longest being Fenchurch St to Marylebone at a whopping 68 minutes!!)

Sorry, but this does not make it a "connection".

These times are just the amount of time allowed by ticketing and route planning for passengers to change from one service to another at certain points due to the size of, or geographic distance between, certain stations; nothing more. It is not a guarantee that services will be held in the event of delay to the inbound working.

one TN
 

Table 52

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Right, I think this is case of mixed definitions.

I'm of the view that a 'connecting' service is one which in the example of York is 8 mins or more after the one you're coming from. It may or may not be deliberatly timed to connect but it does. But equally as oneTN says, it is not 'connecting' in the sense that it has to be held.
 

Tomnick

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In Yorkie's example, I suspect the decision to hold the connecting service at York would have (or should have) involved the GNER traincrew, GNER Control, Northern Control and the Harrogate traincrew? So there's every possibility that the message got muddled up somewhere. It's possibly a good case for having proper dispatch for all trains at 'big' stations like York (where I think Northern, and possibly TPE now?, are 'self-dispatching') - but I think it also shows that it can be put down to communication failure rather than a complete refusal to hold the train.
 

bunnahabhain

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Self dispatching would earn you a discipline if the station is indeed manned, I certainly cant think of any reason why that would be implemented.
 

Tomnick

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Jamie said:
Self dispatching would earn you a discipline if the station is indeed manned, I certainly cant think of any reason why that would be implemented.
To save money! Northern and TPE (officially) self-dispatch at quite a few stations - presumably to avoid having to pay GNER (in this case, and Doncaster too) to have someone come out and wave a white thing at them. And hold the train for a few seconds if there's a shedload of passengers en-route from another platform.
 

yorkie

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one TN said:
Sorry, but this does not make it a "connection".
It does. (Pages 5 & 7 of my old NRT (04-05) show this - but this may be different with the new NRT)
one TN said:
These times are just the amount of time allowed by ticketing and route planning for passengers to change from one service to another at certain points due to the size of, or geographic distance between, certain stations; nothing more. It is not a guarantee that services will be held in the event of delay to the inbound working.

one TN
Also known as a 'connection'.

Where possible, connections should be maintained but they cannot be guaranteed. In some cases, such as the ones in question, they should be held. In others involving high frequency services, they shouldn't be held.
 

ChrisCooper

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A lot of the problem here is that many people don't seem to understand what is being complained about here. No-one is saying that connecting trains should be held under all circumstances, but what people are objecting to is the situation where trains are sometimes not held under any circumstances. Oviously a connecting service shouldn't be held for a considerable amount of time to allow a very small proportion of passengers to connect onto it, when the service is quite frequent. On the other hand, there are times when a train is allowed to leave dead on time when the connecting service is just minutes away, or even has arrived but passengers havn't had chance to get from one side of the station to the other, and the passengers making the connection are a big proportion of those who use the service, and the next train is not for an hour or more. One time I was waiting for a delayed Silverlink train at Coventry to head to Birmingham. This was due to leave just before the Central all station service, and I'm sure some passengers would connect onto it for intermediate stations. The Central was givern the road first and left just as the Silverlink was pulling in, so of cource held the Silverlink up all the way to New Street, causing it to be even more delayed (they didn't even hold it for us to pass at International). Can anyone see the sence in that? Well, there is one thing, performance measurement and penalty payments. The Central service was dead on time, so they payed nothing and it didn't effect their performance. Silverlink on the other hand not only incured more delay, and more damage to their perfomance stats, but also might have had to pay up partial refunds for anyone who way delayed by missing the connection. Had the Central Train waited though, they might have ended up over the 5min threshold and had to pay up a fine and see a loss of performance themselves, with the only benefit of helping a rival TOC (although owned by the same parent company) and it's customers. I'm sure in BR days, or even had they been the same TOC operating the service, the local train would have waited. Then again, even when it's the same TOC it doesn't help. When MML HSTs used to overtake the Turbostars at Leicester, I've seen Turbostars let out on time just ahead of late running HSTs, causing the HST to then pick up more delay as the Turbostar stops at every station.
One more thing, as far as the branch train being delayed on it's return journey, surely there should be sufficient slack in the journey and the turn around at the other end to be still right time on the return run despite a couple of mins delay on the outwards run. The fact that if the branch train was late returning to the main line station, passengers might miss connections is another issue. Oviously holding the mainline train is far less practical, but passengers are likely to have a wider range of options. Oviously a big problem is if they have cheap, advanced purchase tickets, since they might have to pay an upgrade to the nearest available ticket that can be bought on the train, which could be a considerable additonal expense.
Overall, the whole issue of connections does highlight why people tend to be very annoyed when they loose through trains, or when services are split, and why people dislike the very high price of tickets that don't require travel on a certain service, and further why compulsory reservations won't work without big changes.
 

Table 52

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ChrisCooper said:
Oviously a big problem is if they have cheap, advanced purchase tickets, since they might have to pay an upgrade to the nearest available ticket that can be bought on the train, which could be a considerable additonal expense.

Not a problem in the slightest. If you've purchased an advance purchase ticket say from Skipton to Kings Cross and your Skipton-Leeds train is delayed, causing you to miss your reserved GNER train, you can get the next GNER train without having to upgrade your ticket.

If you have an advance purchase ticket, so long as you arrive in good time for your first train and you allow the minimum connection times at each station, if one train is late you cannot be made to pay a supplement to board another because your ticket remains valid and you have started your journey with the aim and intention of catching your booked train(s).
 

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Table 52 said:
if one train is late you cannot be made to pay a supplement to board another because your ticket remains valid and you have started your journey with the aim and intention of catching your booked train(s).

In theory. Seen many many be chinged up due to missed "connections". Mainly if have a CDR or similar to main line station for APEX forward.

"Connections".... been getting worse since sectorisation and now just another shambles of our current system!
 

Table 52

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87015 said:
In theory. Seen many many be chinged up due to missed "connections". Mainly if have a CDR or similar to main line station for APEX forward.

"Connections".... been getting worse since sectorisation and now just another shambles of our current system!

Ah, if you've split you're ticket, that's a different matter. You are then making 2 totally seperate journeys and as such the second one would be regarded as a case of consiquencial loss, not covered as stated in the Nat Rat Con. of Car.
 

yorkie

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ChrisCooper said:
.. Oviously a big problem is if they have cheap, advanced purchase tickets, since they might have to pay an upgrade to the nearest available ticket that can be bought on the train, which could be a considerable additonal expense....
No, passengers should never be asked to pay more if their connecting train is late. If a guard tries it on, refuse to pay, they'll never win in court (and I doubt they'd take it that far due to the negative publicity it would generate).
[EDIT]
Table 52 said:
Ah, if you've split you're ticket, that's a different matter. You are then making 2 totally seperate journeys and as such the second one would be regarded as a case of consiquencial loss, not covered as stated in the Nat Rat Con. of Car.
NCoC disagrees - a journey can be considered a through journey if you split tickets.

19. Using a combination of tickets

You may use two or more tickets for one journey as long as together they cover the entire journey..."
 

87015

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yorkie said:
No, passengers should never be asked to pay more if their connecting train is late. If a guard tries it on, refuse to pay, they'll never win in court (and I doubt they'd take it that far due to the negative publicity it would generate).

Exactly, but your average punter is less likely to have the same idea, will get chinged up by some desperate clown and so another alienated customer...
 

yorkie

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87015 said:
Exactly, but your average punter is less likely to have the same idea, will get chinged up by some desperate clown and so another alienated customer...
Not if I was there and overheard it happening!

I'd hope that anyone who witnesses any form of intimidation to pay for a delay would stand up for that person and prevent it happening.

I've prevented 2 chings now, at the hands of the same desperate gripper who "does not care what the manual says" (his words). The score is 2-0 to me.
 

O L Leigh

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Sorry Yorkie, but what you and I know as a "connection" are not the same thing.

Notwithstanding the fact that the NRT allows passengers 8 minutes to cross York station from one train to another, this does not mean that these interchanges are guaranteed or that trains will be held in the event of delay. All it does is provide information to passengers so that they can plan their journeys properly. I've checked the GNER timetable, and there are no advertised connections for any of their services in the same way that there were when it was INTERCITY East Coast. Destinations such as Sunderland, Huddersfield and Harrogate are simply not mentioned.

To pick up on other points, headways and slack on branch services (whatever they are) already exist. My point was to ask to what extent a service can be delayed before it starts having a detrimental effect elsewhere. Not all local services run up and down branchlines out of the way of the rest of the network. Nevertheless this is a hypothetical question because of the way that performance is measured.

As for the decision-making behind which trains go when, the decision generally rests with Network Rail rather than the TOC's. The signallers no doubt have their own procedures and protocols that they follow during times of disruption which decide whether or not the order in which trains run is to be changed or not. The example quoted of a slow Central service getting routed ahead of a delayed fast Silverlink service sounds like a perfect example of this in action. I would expect that that the TOC's could feed into this process in extreme circumstances, but it would only be when the each TOC's control agrees the measures with Network Rail control what is required to be done.

As for the particular example at the very start of the thread, I agree with the poster who suggested that the mix-up was down to a communication failure. I will just say one more time (and, I hope, for the last time), any agreement to have the Harrogate service held would have been a special arrangement and not the normal course of working.

I don't wish to be funny or appear bolshie, but over the course of my contributions to this thread I have explained almost everything there is to know about railway operation, delay attribution and the way in which they affect "connections" at interchange stations. I trust that it is sufficient to illustrate why things happen the way they do. Whether or not this situation is fair is the matter for another thread altogether, but I should just state one last time that, while the performance of rail companies is based on delay minutes, there are no other options. If connecting services are to return, there has to be some other way of measuring performance that still allows poorly performing companies to be punished and those affected through no fault of their own compensated.

one TN
 

yorkie

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The GNER timetable is purely that - GNER only.

Table 26 does still exist and still shows connecting trains for some destinations.

What I consider a valid connection, is by the definition in the NRT, and this is not a guaranteed connection.

If your definition of connection is guaranteed, then probably nothing ever fits that criteria, but you are guaranteed to get home ultimately (even if on a combination of tickets).
 

Mojo

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Table 52 said:
Ah, if you've split you're ticket, that's a different matter. You are then making 2 totally seperate journeys and as such the second one would be regarded as a case of consiquencial loss, not covered as stated in the Nat Rat Con. of Car.

I've recieved refunds from First Great Western and Chiltern Railways compensating me for delays when I've been on split tickets. As Yorkie says, the National Conditions of Carnage [sic ;)] say it's one journey.
 
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