Differing WTT and public timings - clockface preservation?

[nw1]

It's fairly well known that the public departure times and WTT departure times can occasionally be different, to the tune of a minute or so.

I'm wondering what the main reasons for such a difference are.

One thought I had is that it allows clockface public times to be preserved, even where that cannot be done in actuality for pathing or platforming reasons. So for example if you have a half-hourly service at xx15 and xx45, but in the peak, for pathing reasons, the 1715 and 1745 have to depart at 1716 and 1746 (e.g. to fit an extra train in a few minutes earlier), you advertise them at 1715 and 1745 in order to preserve the clockface. Is that a common reason for differing public and WTT times?

Is this common practice across TOCs, to try to preserve the clockface timings in the public timetable in the peak where the actual departure has to be a minute or two later for operational reasons?

Arrivals are presumably a different matter as recovery time would presumably be the main reason for differences, with the public timing allowing for recovery time even if the WTT shows earlier.

 

[jfollows]

It’s an extra minute of unstated recovery time, in that the train can leave at the advertised departure time which is earlier than the working timetable time. I don’t think it has anything to do with clockface departure times. Loads of XXpYY WTT departures, the p meaning advertised 60 or 90 seconds earlier. q and r are less common, meaning advertised 120/150 and 180/210 seconds earlier respectively.

The WTT is the art of the possible, but public departure times are what should be used if possible rather than the WTT departure times.

 

[The Planner]

Clock face is one of the reasons it is done, also because you cannot have half minutes in the public timetable. Plenty of station stops will have a ½ minute in them in the WTT.

 

[nw1]

Thanks for the replies. I can imagine clockface might be a reason for doing it for 'premium' intercity services in which I can imagine TOCs wanting to present to the passenger an easy-to-remember all-day consistent pattern rather than including a 'messy' 1716 and 1746 in the timetable where the standard pattern is xx15 and xx45. Obviously if a bigger difference is forced for operational reasons, e.g. 1718 and 1748, they probably wouldn't.

Much less so for "regional rail", commuter or local services, though.

 

[jfollows]

No, Avanti retimed all its Manchester services away from clockface departure times from London, they’re now at xx.33, xx.53 & xx.13 to fit in an additional stop whilst leaving the Manchester area times unchanged.
Clockface gets sacrificed quickly enough once a timetable gets messed about. It may have been the intention of the original timetable, of course.

 

[nw1]

No, Avanti retimed all its Manchester services away from clockface departure times from London, they’re now at xx.33, xx.53 & xx.13 to fit in an additional stop whilst leaving the Manchester area times unchanged.
Clockface gets sacrificed quickly enough once a timetable gets messed about. It may have been the intention of the original timetable, of course.

Fair enough though I was making a slightly different point; I was perhaps unclear in what I meant by clockface. I meant having a consistent all-day departure time in the public timetable even where this is forced to differ in the WTT for a minute or so in the peak. So if the WTT times are 1615, 1645, 17p16, 17p46, 1815, 1845 you show the 17p16 and 17p46 as 1715 and 1745 in the public timetable to provide consistency.

With the Manchesters I note that's a whole 7 mins earlier (last time I used the line it was 00, 20, 40), seems a big allowance for one extra stop, I'd have expected 3-4 mins.

 

[jfollows]

I think of working timetables a bit like singing microtonal music, which I once did, the music is annotated in quarter tone markings but despite all the precision, to a human they mean “a bit sharp” or “a bit flat”. Likewise working timetables represent unattainable perfection, even assuming the sectional running times on which they’re built are correct. They allow the construction of a timetable around a number of rules, and then with a bit of luck it’s reasonably workable.
Sometimes it isn’t - through Deansgate in the 2018 timetable clearly wasn’t, and the former xx.40 Euston-Manchester was held up by the 100mph Euston-Crewe at Colwich, then - when this was retimed - by the previous hour’s xx.43 Euston-Birmingham-Crewe at Stafford. Both of these clashes have now gone, although the working timetables allowed them at the time.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 May 2025 ==

Fair enough though I was making a slightly different point; I was perhaps unclear in what I meant by clockface. I meant having a consistent all-day departure time in the public timetable even where this is forced to differ in the WTT for a minute or so in the peak. So if the WTT times are 1615, 1645, 17p16, 17p46, 1815, 1845 you show the 17p16 and 17p46 as 1715 and 1745 in the public timetable to provide consistency.

Yes, I agree with you, this can happen, although my reading with earlier advertised departure times is generally not for this reason.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 May 2025 ==

With the Manchesters I note that's a whole 7 mins earlier (last time I used the line it was 00, 20, 40), seems a big allowance for one extra stop, I'd have expected 3-4 mins.

Exactly so, but an extra stop probably ‘costs’ more like 5 minutes at least I suggest. The extra 7 minutes doesn’t make Wilmslow arrival times any more punctual than before, at least.

 

[nw1]

Exactly so, but an extra stop probably ‘costs’ more like 5 minutes at least I suggest. The extra 7 minutes doesn’t make Wilmslow arrival times any more punctual than before, at least.

I wonder if that has changed over the years. One quick random example from Timetable World (and I realise it's a while back) in 1982 they had some HSTs on Paddington-Oxford services during the midday period, utilising them between the peaks. A one-off non-stop did it in 43 mins (1100-1143) while the standard pattern was 47 mins with a 2-min Reading stop (xx50-xx37).

 

[jfollows]

And it depends on the line speed through the station, a call at Watford, Milton Keynes or Rugby will “cost” more than one at Stafford, for example. Reading wasn’t anything like 125mph so the stopping penalty would have been less as you note.

Reading was 50mph non-stop from memory, perhaps 80mph on the up main only? I used to use the 09:12 Oxford-Paddington which ran non-stop in 1980/81 and it hardly shot through the station on a good day!

 

[Oxfordblues]

A good example of timing adjustment is 1M16 the Highland Sleeper due to arrive Euston 07:47 but advertised at 08:00, so it can be 13 minutes late but still "on time" to the passengers. If Avanti did a similar thing their punctuality statistics would improve significantly!

 

[The Planner]

Thanks for the replies. I can imagine clockface might be a reason for doing it for 'premium' intercity services in which I can imagine TOCs wanting to present to the passenger an easy-to-remember all-day consistent pattern rather than including a 'messy' 1716 and 1746 in the timetable where the standard pattern is xx15 and xx45. Obviously if a bigger difference is forced for operational reasons, e.g. 1718 and 1748, they probably wouldn't.

Much less so for "regional rail", commuter or local services, though.

"messy" doesn't come into it. At the end of the day a repeating xx.09 and xx.13 for example is clockface.

 

[nw1]

"messy" doesn't come into it. At the end of the day a repeating xx.09 and xx.13 for example is clockface.

That was my point - see #6. My point being: would a clockface departure time (even if it's xx13 or something) be amended to xx14 in the public as well as the WTT if a one-minute delay was needed for one hour in the peak (e.g. to fit a preceding xx11 peak additional in), or would the xx13 standard pattern be kept in the public timetable to keep a consistent time, even thought the WTT departure time is xx14?

Perhaps picking xx15/45 as an example was a bad idea on my part as I wasn't focusing on divisible-by-5 times, but consistency between peak and off-peak in the public timetable.

 

[jfollows]

I do agree with you.
I used to go home from school sometimes on the 16:10 Manchester-Macclesfield. Normal Manchester departures for London were xx.12, but what would have been the 16:12 had a working timetable departure of 16:13 to follow the 16:10 to Stockport, but was advertised as 16:12 from Manchester, 16:20 from Stockport and 16:28 from Wilmslow to fit the clockface pattern.

But since then, working timetables are plagued with "p" "advertised earlier" departure times which are regular and not for a specific reason such as was the case for 1A65.

 

[nw1]

And it depends on the line speed through the station, a call at Watford, Milton Keynes or Rugby will “cost” more than one at Stafford, for example. Reading wasn’t anything like 125mph so the stopping penalty would have been less as you note.

Reading was 50mph non-stop from memory, perhaps 80mph on the up main only? I used to use the 09:12 Oxford-Paddington which ran non-stop in 1980/81 and it hardly shot through the station on a good day!

I'm trying to remember how fast trains went through Reading when I visited regularly from around 1984 to 1986. To be fair, very few trains did - a few HSTs and classic loco-hauled services in the peak, but almost everything stopped off-peak. The down Cornish Riviera went through non-stop, around midday if I remember right. I seem to remember them doing a decent speed (there was a through line between platform 4 and 5), maybe 60-70mph, but not exactly shooting through, as you say: HSTs certainly weren't doing 125mph, for example!

Woking was the station where I remember non-stops absolutely belting through, the hourly down and up '91's in particular. There were of course no through lines between the platforms, so you really felt them!

 

[jfollows]

A good example of timing adjustment is 1M16 the Highland Sleeper due to arrive Euston 07:47 but advertised at 08:00, so it can be 13 minutes late but still "on time" to the passengers. If Avanti did a similar thing their punctuality statistics would improve significantly!

Oh, agreed, although I didn’t mean to post this!

 

[30907]

Both preserving the regular interval and advertising public departure earlier than working go back at least to the 50s (on the SR).

 

[AdamWW]

A good example of timing adjustment is 1M16 the Highland Sleeper due to arrive Euston 07:47 but advertised at 08:00, so it can be 13 minutes late but still "on time" to the passengers. If Avanti did a similar thing their punctuality statistics would improve significantly!

Of course it doesn't just improve statistics when this is done, it also provides an opportunity to reduce Delay Repay payouts since the definition of delay is based on the passenger timetable rather than the actual delay incurred.

For some reason though I've yet to see this mentioned explicitly in Delay Repay FAQs explaining why you may get 15 minutes worth of Delay Repay when your train was cancelled and you got the one half an hour after.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

TfW advertise most of their ex-Stockport arrivals at Manchester Piccadilly a couple minutes later in the public timetables, convenient for a line that had so many cancellations only a few months ago, likely helping many delay repay claims out of the 60 minute zone.

 

[AdamWW]

TfW advertise most of their ex-Stockport arrivals at Manchester Piccadilly a couple minutes later in the public timetables, convenient for a line that had so many cancellations only a few months ago, likely helping many delay repay claims out of the 60 minute zone.

Indeed.

I've seen in the past people saying they've been successful in challenging payouts like this, but when I've tried it with TfW they haven't budged.