Diagramed train lengths

[superkev]

The northern website give details short (and long) formed trains but as far as I can see not how many carriages there supposed to be.
K

 

[bb21]

Does it matter what it was supposed to be?

 

[30907]

I wonder if the OP is looking for information about normal train formations, as opposed to short/long formed, where the booked formation is given?

 

[superkev]

To me it seems in a par with say announcing trains are late or early but not publishing a timetable as to when they are on time.
K

 

[PHILIPE]

To me it seems in a par with say announcing trains are late or early but not publishing a timetable as to when they are on time.
K

Still don't understand what you're trying to say.

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

Surely it's obvious what the OP is saying?

If TOCs go to the effort of highlighting when a train is short formed, why do they not also provide information of what the diagrammed formations are in the first place?

(Good question btw)

 

[superkev]

Surely it's obvious what the OP is saying?

If TOCs go to the effort of highlighting when a train is short formed, why do they not also provide information of what the diagrammed formations are in the first place?

(Good question btw)

That's what I was trying to say.
K

 

[bb21]

To me it seems in a par with say announcing trains are late or early but not publishing a timetable as to when they are on time.
K

Depends on how they are described.

"This train is 2 coaches short today." is equivalent to saying "This train is 5 minutes late today."

"This train is 2 coaches short today. It is booked 10 coaches." is equivalent to saying "This train is 5 minutes late. It is booked to depart at 19:00."

"This train is formed of only 8 coaches today." is equivalent to saying "This train is expected to depart at 19:05 today."

The only possible use I can think of in the latter case (which AIUI is how Northern normally describe short-formations on their website) of the normal booked formation is to potentially gauge how busy a train is likely to be, but train lengths are determined by a number of factors not necessarily all directly related to how busy the train is expected to be. Some busy trains will be formed of 2-car and some 4-cars may be much less busy due to one of the unit being mainly for stock movement. Local knowledge will be far more useful in those cases.

A train short-formed as a 2-car is likely to be very busy in the peaks regardless. A 4-car depending on the geographical location may be busy and a 6-car will almost certainly have spare room on most Northern routes even in the peak.

If you are desperate to find out about booked formation, twitter desk is there to help.

That said it is not a difficult one to implement, but it is hardly a big deal if not done.

 

[PHILIPE]

Surely it's obvious what the OP is saying?

If TOCs go to the effort of highlighting when a train is short formed, why do they not also provide information of what the diagrammed formations are in the first place?

(Good question btw)

Understand now. GWR and ATW (if the latter bother to post) show them on Journey Check but do not highlight if actually short formed on Departure Boards, just quoting the number of carriages.

 

[swt class 450]

The northern website give details short (and long) formed trains but as far as I can see not how many carriages there supposed to be.
K

Northern Rail do show this information. If you look on the journey check page for all short formation services it will say something like "Will be formed of (number) coaches instead of (number)" for each short formed service.

All of the following websites (and probably some others as well):

Abellio Greater Anglia
Arriva Trains Wales
C2C
Chiltern Railways
Gatwick Express
Great Northern
Great Western Railway
London Midland
Northern Rail
South West Trains
Southern
Southeastern
Thameslink

All show the original booked formation of the train for all short formed services.

 

[30907]

The "2 vice 3" formula is what would have been communicated to staff long before the internet (I remember it coming off the teleprinter...), and I suspect it has just been translated into English for passengers and comes from the same sources.

The question is, I suppose, whether the booked formations can be easily displayed on the timetable feed. I notice on a recent visit down South that platform monitors at some stations can display the information.

 

[221129]

Understand now. GWR and ATW (if the latter bother to post) show them on Journey Check but do not highlight if actually short formed on Departure Boards, just quoting the number of carriages.

GWR certainly do.

 

[me123]

Depends on how they are described.

"This train is 2 coaches short today." is equivalent to saying "This train is 5 minutes late today."

"This train is 2 coaches short today. It is booked 10 coaches." is equivalent to saying "This train is 5 minutes late. It is booked to depart at 19:00."

"This train is formed of only 8 coaches today." is equivalent to saying "This train is expected to depart at 19:05 today."

The only possible use I can think of in the latter case (which AIUI is how Northern normally describe short-formations on their website) of the normal booked formation is to potentially gauge how busy a train is likely to be, but train lengths are determined by a number of factors not necessarily all directly related to how busy the train is expected to be. Some busy trains will be formed of 2-car and some 4-cars may be much less busy due to one of the unit being mainly for stock movement. Local knowledge will be far more useful in those cases.

A train short-formed as a 2-car is likely to be very busy in the peaks regardless. A 4-car depending on the geographical location may be busy and a 6-car will almost certainly have spare room on most Northern routes even in the peak.

If you are desperate to find out about booked formation, twitter desk is there to help.

That said it is not a difficult one to implement, but it is hardly a big deal if not done.

I actually think it is very useful information. Given the choice between a train booked for four carriage and one booked for eight, a passenger may be more likely to choose the latter (assuming they weren't specifically constrained by time, of course). So you could see a better spread of passengers over the services.

Providing real time information regarding the train length on the platform helps pax position themselves appropriately. If you don't know if it's a three or six car train, you'll stand in an area where you know there will be a carriage. If you know that's it's six cars, pax will spread themselves along the platform. For short formations, you'll see fewer people running from the portion of the platform without train because they'll know where the train stops. This could reduce dwell times at stations. (Occasional travellers could still fall foul of this, but signage could help, and of course most travellers are reasonably frequent travellers so you'd be guided by what others are doing).

And the point about the information being relevant in context is also useful for the above reason. Very rarely if ever is timing information given just as "ten minutes late". Only two carriages can mean 2 vice 3 (i.e. probably not much difference) or 2 vice 7 (i.e. you may not get on and ).

I think the information is very useful, and I'd like to see it published more readily and freely available. Of course, it's in the peaks that the info becomes really useful - off peak it's probably of more limited value.

 

[Parallel]

GWR certainly do.

The non HST services show how many coaches the service has, but if you're not a regular user of the said service, you wouldn't know it was short formed. With HSTs, they usually say "No coach *insert letter* available".

One thing I have noticed, is a few services that are regularly shortformed now no longer show the length of coaches on the CIS at the stations. An example of this is is the 08:53 from Weymouth that should attach to a 153 at Westbury and continue to Bristol. It doesn't show, or announce how many coaches it has.

Same with a few other Bristol area services that are frequently shortformed.

 

[JN114]

GW CIS takes the number of coaches directly out of Integrale (the stock allocation software) - unfortunately either the feed or the CIS software is somewhat dim-witted, so if the number of coaches changes enroute, CIS can't work out what to display so shows nothing.

Any "there is no Coach _" announcements, or the similar "we apologise this trains has # coaches today" type announcements are added to the train manually by the CIS controllers. With hundreds of trains to monitor they only tend to do ones they're directly told about. The text boxes into which they can type additional messages to attach to the trains at stations can only take a maximum of 32 characters, fitting in a "X coaches instead of Y today" type message, and keeping it un-abbreviated and jargon free is difficult.

 

[superkev]

GWR certainly do.

Is there a link which shows diagramed no of coaches?
K

 

[louis97]

GW CIS takes the number of coaches directly out of Integrale (the stock allocation software) - unfortunately either the feed or the CIS software is somewhat dim-witted, so if the number of coaches changes enroute, CIS can't work out what to display so shows nothing.

Its the CIS software I believe, the CIS system shows the same messages for each service at every station. Therefore it can't show different things before and after the attachment or detachment. Obviously this keeps the information consistent between stations, but as these messages are used to show formation it dosen't quite work when the formation changes en-route.

GWR could do with taking the formation out of the messages and putting it after the TOC, that is what other TOCs do to get around this I think.

 

[JN114]

Its the CIS software I believe, the CIS system shows the same messages for each service at every station. Therefore it can't show different things before and after the attachment or detachment. Obviously this keeps the information consistent between stations, but as these messages are used to show formation it dosen't quite work when the formation changes en-route.

GWR could do with taking the formation out of the messages and putting it after the TOC, that is what other TOCs do to get around this I think.

No, you can put different information at different stations for the same train. It's the auto-population of the number of coaches field that is dim-witted, and the consequent effect it has on block edits that populate the NTI Line 1 Comment with "Formed of X Coaches". The number of services which divide enroute make such manual alterations impractical, and the frequency with which such trains are short formed etc make doing it as a block edit impractical as well.

Before the upgrade to Integrale the system could interpret the data coming out of Genius just fine, and would even correctly announce that the train divided enroute with X carriages to Y and Z beyond.

I'm not sure what you mean by putting the info after the TOC - there is no facility to change the ordering of information within announcements within ATOS LICC, at least not at an operator level. Even then it wouldn't help, the issue is one of translation: the CIS system cannot interpret Integrale's way of putting out formation changes, and so removes all formation when it doesn't understand the data it is getting to prevent it showing incorrect information. Again, it worked fine with Genius so I suspect the issue is with Integrale, but I don't know for certain - it wouldn't surprise me if LICC was at fault.

Source - I worked on GWR CIS before my present role with the company.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

GWR could do with taking the formation out of the messages

It doesn't tell you when the stock is locked out of use. So you get a 7 or 8 car lash up of 165s and 166s with only the rear set in use.

 

[louis97]

No, you can put different information at different stations for the same train. It's the auto-population of the number of coaches field that is dim-witted, and the consequent effect it has on block edits that populate the NTI Line 1 Comment with "Formed of X Coaches". The number of services which divide enroute make such manual alterations impractical, and the frequency with which such trains are short formed etc make doing it as a block edit impractical as well.

Before the upgrade to Integrale the system could interpret the data coming out of Genius just fine, and would even correctly announce that the train divided enroute with X carriages to Y and Z beyond.

I'm not sure what you mean by putting the info after the TOC - there is no facility to change the ordering of information within announcements within ATOS LICC, at least not at an operator level. Even then it wouldn't help, the issue is one of translation: the CIS system cannot interpret Integrale's way of putting out formation changes, and so removes all formation when it doesn't understand the data it is getting to prevent it showing incorrect information. Again, it worked fine with Genius so I suspect the issue is with Integrale, but I don't know for certain - it wouldn't surprise me if LICC was at fault.

Source - I worked on GWR CIS before my present role with the company.

Interesting stuff! Thanks for that!

Did you work at GWR before they got the new CIS system for all stations? Was the old HSS system any better in your opinion? (I know FGW didn't use the formations very often, if at all, back then).

I was referring to what London Midland do, where the formation is displayed like 'A London Midland service formed of 4 coaches', scrolling directly after the calling pattern, but given what you have said now it is possible they use a different source to what GWR use.

It doesn't tell you when the stock is locked out of use. So you get a 7 or 8 car lash up of 165s and 166s with only the rear set in use.

Does the CIS know through its sources when units are locked out of use then, Integrale or whatever?

 

[JN114]

Interesting stuff! Thanks for that!

Did you work at GWR before they got the new CIS system for all stations? Was the old HSS system any better in your opinion? (I know FGW didn't use the formations very often, if at all, back then).

I was referring to what London Midland do, where the formation is displayed like 'A London Midland service formed of 4 coaches', scrolling directly after the calling pattern, but given what you have said now it is possible they use a different source to what GWR use.

The old systems had been completely phased out by the time I joined - but not for long. According to my more learned colleagues - the Wessex system was alright, the HSS system was temperamental but capable when it actually worked; and the LTV system was limited but the easiest to use. The new system is essentially a highly updated version of what Wessex Trains introduced (same supplier etc).

There are at least 3, possibly 4 different CIS systems in use nationally (note this is the back-end software that drives it I'm talking about, not the recordings themselves or display equipment - that's yet more variations) - I know that ATW and Network Rail use the same system GWR have (Which is produced by ATOS Worldline and is called LICC); SWT definitely have a very different system to us. I can't speak for other TOCs but there's at least one other system out there because at least 3 manufactures get talked about in the Darwin software patches. Integrale is the name of the software used for resource allocation - for a variety of reasons and like Tyrell it feeds information into LICC directly, not via Darwin

At an admin level I suspect it's possible to do all kinds of fancy things with announcement ordering and so forth. The 32 character limit on our LICC is due to hardware limitations on the ground. Paddington station has exactly the same software and they can type seemingly infinitesimally long scrolling message where we only have 32 characters.

Does the CIS know through its sources when units are locked out of use then, Integrale or whatever?

Integrale only puts out what vehicles make up the train (and therefore number of coaches) - not what is in use. I can't speak for my colleagues but if I've got something running round with so many coaches locked out of use, I'll ask CIS to put a suitable message on the screens (there are no generic "Front X Coaches Only" announcement files, only location specific ones like Avoncliff, St James Park etc).