• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Making up lost time

Status
Not open for further replies.

Three-Nine

Member
Joined
5 Aug 2015
Messages
110
There was a very serious incident in Japan nearly 15 years ago, the cause of which has been blamed (officially, as usual with these things theres some ambiguity) on a driver trying to make up lost time by exceeding the permitted speeds. Some blame may also lie with the companys culture towards delays, and may serve as an example of what can happen when more emphasis is put on "making up time" than safety:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

al78

Established Member
Joined
7 Jan 2013
Messages
2,400
Straight and level track - Hold it to linespeed, where possible. (signals, conditions, stopping pattern, ESR/TSRs etc)

If I was a 56 vs 60 but was running late, then yes, I'd be pushing towards linespeed every time. Watching the speedo is something you do all the time, just like in a car.

You definitely should NOT be doing that in a car unless you relish the thought of crashing into something or someone, you should constantly be scanning the road and your mirrors for hazards, and paying attention to what is going on around you. It is trivial to keep to the speed limit with no more than an occasional glance at the speedometer and paying attention to the tone of the engine and what gear you are in.
 

MidlandsChap

Member
Joined
15 Apr 2018
Messages
194
Sorry if this comes across as a really basic question.
How much slack is there currently built into timetables? I suppose what I want to know is do drivers have to always need to get up to line speed (assuming conditions are good), and accelerate and decelerate at a certain rate to keep their train on time?
 

Esker-pades

Established Member
Joined
23 Jul 2015
Messages
3,766
Location
Beds, Bucks, or somewhere else
Sorry if this comes across as a really basic question.
How much slack is there currently built into timetables? I suppose what I want to know is do drivers have to always need to get up to line speed (assuming conditions are good), and accelerate and decelerate at a certain rate to keep their train on time?
It honestly depends on the service. If you look at the RealTimeTrains detailed mode, there are columns on the far right which show any allowances (Eng = engineering, Pth = path, Pfr = performance).

Have a look at this link:
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/Y70218/2019/05/15/advanced

At Morpeth (for example), there is 1 minute of engineering allowance, and 3.5 minutes of pathing allowance. In theory, a driver could make up 4.5 minutes here.
 

dk1

Veteran Member
Joined
2 Oct 2009
Messages
15,823
Location
East Anglia
Sorry if this comes across as a really basic question.
How much slack is there currently built into timetables? I suppose what I want to know is do drivers have to always need to get up to line speed (assuming conditions are good), and accelerate and decelerate at a certain rate to keep their train on time?
It just comes naturally. Passing times are often given on diagrams. If I consistently lost time on clear signals I would consider it a huge failure on my part as a driver. When trainees are with me my pet hate is getting my name in the log for losing time regardless of the fact I wasn't in the chair. They soon learn & my response to them slowly pulling away is "bloody well thrash it" <(
 

70014IronDuke

Established Member
Joined
13 Jun 2015
Messages
3,686
The principle of minimising overall delay still stands, which can and often does mean (e.g.) regulating a right-time stopper for a late-running express to go first. Where it seems to go wrong the most, in my experience, is where ARS is provided and the signalmen (possibly under management instruction) rely on that to regulate for them even though it appears to make terrible decisions when things are running out of course.

Thanks, good to know. Sorry, ARS is ? (Automatic Regulation System, perhaps?) I just don't know.
 

Dren Ahmeti

Member
Joined
17 Oct 2017
Messages
550
Location
Bristol
Thanks, good to know. Sorry, ARS is ? (Automatic Regulation System, perhaps?) I just don't know.
Automatic Route Setting, present in most IECC’s!
Its role should be regulation, especially for complex areas, but it very rarely achieves that when even 1 train is late, or freights in general.
TVSC, I’m looking at you! o_O
 

Tomnick

Established Member
Joined
10 Jun 2005
Messages
5,827
Thanks, good to know. Sorry, ARS is ? (Automatic Regulation System, perhaps?) I just don't know.
Automatic Route Setting, sorry. It’s intended as a fairly simple aid to allow the signalman to take his focus off quieter areas of the workstation. Unfortunately, the preference nowadays seems to be to let it get on with the job.
 

70014IronDuke

Established Member
Joined
13 Jun 2015
Messages
3,686
Not forgetting the attraction of loosing your path of you were on the cusp of overtime.
Indeed. I'm sure there were other perverse incentives to boot!

Automatic Route Setting, sorry. It’s intended as a fairly simple aid to allow the signalman to take his focus off quieter areas of the workstation. Unfortunately, the preference nowadays seems to be to let it get on with the job.

Ah, thanks to all for this.
It seems it was a good idea at the time, just the law of unintended consequences got in the way :)
 
Last edited:

MidlandsChap

Member
Joined
15 Apr 2018
Messages
194
When trainees are with me my pet hate is getting my name in the log for losing time regardless of the fact I wasn't in the chair. They soon learn & my response to them slowly pulling away is "bloody well thrash it" <(

Alleged footage of learner driver leaving station under orders of dk1.

 

contrad!ction

Member
Joined
25 Apr 2016
Messages
103
Automatic Route Setting, but I imagine a signaller will be along shortly to explain it better than I could.

ARS is a very clever and complex system that is, for the most part, very good at what it is designed to do - which is to regulate trains under normal or mildly perturbed situations. Put very simply, ARS will try to make what it considers to be the best decision with regards to the priority of trains when it detects a conflict between two trains by calculating a weighted average for each train taking into account various factors (lateness, class of train, tidal flows, section running times etc...) and whichever train it considers to cause the least 'delay' has priority. In reality it's a lot more complicated than this but that's the gist.

What ARS was never really designed to do was to deal with severe late running where it will generally give priority to late trains. There are a whole load of things that can cause ARS to make strange decisions, at least from a human's point of view (timetable clashes/errors, incorrect/missing data, headcode confusion, schedule confusion etc...) but ultimately it can only perform calculations on the data that it's given. People are very quick to blame ARS for a wrong regulating decision but most of the time these are down to other factors rather than the internals of the ARS system itself.
 

3rd rail land

Member
Joined
30 Jan 2019
Messages
623
Location
Where the 3rd rail powers the trains
On SWR, I think it's a product of short turn-round times at Waterloo, and (possibly) shortage of spare stock and/or staff, meaning that outgoing services will be delayed if the inbound is late.

To be fair, SWT did it as well, but it does seem to have become more common under SWR, possibly because service disruption seems to have become more frequent since they took over in August 2017.

My most recent was just last Thursday, a Haslemere to London service omitted Worplesdon, Woking and Clapham Junction. Fortunately for me it didn't affect me that time, but Worplesdon passengers would have had an extra 29 minute wait, while missing Woking and CLJ would have broken connections for those already on the train.
I'm very surprised they would skip Clapham Junction. Its a major interchange station. when I use the Portsmouth line I interchange at Clapham Junction.
 
Last edited:

tsr

Established Member
Joined
15 Nov 2011
Messages
7,400
Location
Between the parallel lines
I'm very surprised they would skip Clapham Junction. Its a major interchange station. when I use the Portsmouth line I interchage at Clapham Junction.

SWR don’t stop all their trains there at the best of times - on what would seem to the casual observer a fairly random selection of routes (not that it really is), a number of trains omit it or have set-down/pick-up only stops.

A list of their trains which don’t call is at http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/sea.../0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=pass&order=wtt&toc=SW - although some of those are empties (ECS).

The fact is that stopping at major stations like CLJ is not always a matter of saving mere seconds, but in some cases could account for saving a few minutes. In turn this could prevent a train from turning round late at Waterloo. The same applies for all the other major London termini which serve commuter routes south of the Thames.
 

westv

Established Member
Joined
29 Mar 2013
Messages
4,203
When I had to cart myself to Guildford from Willesden Green for 6 months last year I always preferred to get the services that didn't stop at Clapham Junction.
 

Highlandspring

Established Member
Joined
14 Oct 2017
Messages
2,778
Automatic Route Setting, sorry. It’s intended as a fairly simple aid to allow the signalman to take his focus off quieter areas of the workstation. Unfortunately, the preference nowadays seems to be to let it get on with the job.
ARS is the proprietary name for the system originally developed by BR Research in Derby, which subsequently passed to AEA Technology on privatisation, which became DeltaRail then recently Resonate. Other manufacturers produce their own systems such as Hitachi/TRE Signallers Assistant Route Setting (SARS) which is, in my opinion, more prone to making truly baffling regulating decisions than the Resonate version. The philosophy underpinning ARS/SARS/whatever is to allow the area supervised by a single signaller to be increased without unduly increasing their workload. Signallers should still be actively monitoring what ARS is doing on their workstation and intervening when necessary.
 

DelW

Established Member
Joined
15 Jan 2015
Messages
3,834
I'm very surprised they would skip Clapham Junction. Its a major interchange station. when I use the Portsmouth line I interchage at Clapham Junction.
In general on the Portsmouth Direct, the 2tph semi-fasts skip CLJ (in both directions), while the 1tph each Haslemere and Portsmouth stoppers call there. There are exceptions to those generalisations in the peaks and evenings.
In the case I quoted, which was a stopper from Haslemere, it was shown on departure boards, and announced by the guard on board, that it would run non-stop from Guildford to Waterloo.
 

Tomnick

Established Member
Joined
10 Jun 2005
Messages
5,827
ARS is the proprietary name for the system originally developed by BR Research in Derby, which subsequently passed to AEA Technology on privatisation, which became DeltaRail then recently Resonate. Other manufacturers produce their own systems such as Hitachi/TRE Signallers Assistant Route Setting (SARS) which is, in my opinion, more prone to making truly baffling regulating decisions than the Resonate version. The philosophy underpinning ARS/SARS/whatever is to allow the area supervised by a single signaller to be increased without unduly increasing their workload. Signallers should still be actively monitoring what ARS is doing on their workstation and intervening when necessary.
Thanks - rather an oversimplification on my part, but I do lose track of what's what on the various schemes now. Do any of the more recent systems give any indication of what it's going to do before it actually does it? I understand that that's one of the problems with intervening - by the time you know that it's going to do something baffling, it's already done it and it's then often too late to do anything about it. From conversations that I've had with signalmen though, there does seem to be a reluctance to intervene even where it is possible. The most recent example was when the "wonderful machine", as the signalman put it, held us - when we were ready for a right-time departure - for a late-runner that didn't arrive in the station, without conflict, until a couple of minutes after we should've left, and wouldn't have been ready for another three or four minutes as the driver needed to change ends (we were both class 1 with no station stops or conflicts before our paths diverged a few miles later). That does fit with @contrad!ction 's suggestion that they tend to give priority to late-runners, but in this case it would've knocked us for 7-8 minutes vs no further delay to either service (in the end, the signalman did intervene, but we were already late by then and subsequently knocked the other service as a result).
 

Taunton

Established Member
Joined
1 Aug 2013
Messages
10,019
SNCF in France used to actually pay loco crews a bonus for recovering time when they had been delayed. The day of the year all looked forward to was the spring night when the clocks went forward, and overnight services were paid for recovering 60 minutes.
There was a very serious incident in Japan nearly 15 years ago, the cause of which has been blamed (officially, as usual with these things theres some ambiguity) on a driver trying to make up lost time by exceeding the permitted speeds.
Notable it's necessary to go to the other side of the world half a generation ago to find an example of such an accident. From the Bad Old Days of BR etc I can't recall a single accident where making up time was even a factor ...

an example of what can happen when more emphasis is put on "making up time" than safety
Such hyperbole is inappropriate. It's like those who impose 20mph speed limits on main roads in towns and then pretend that 21mph, allowed for generations, is now automatically Reckless Driving at any time. One expects certainly from rail drivers that they are fully competent and able to understand completely what reasonable speeds they can do.
 

Tomnick

Established Member
Joined
10 Jun 2005
Messages
5,827
Such hyperbole is inappropriate. It's like those who impose 20mph speed limits on main roads in towns and then pretend that 21mph, allowed for generations, is now automatically Reckless Driving at any time. One expects certainly from rail drivers that they are fully competent and able to understand completely what reasonable speeds they can do.
Easy. The permissible speeds for any given portion of line, and no more. If it was "reasonable" to do a higher speed, then the permissible speed would be higher, no?
 

ComUtoR

Established Member
Joined
13 Dec 2013
Messages
9,399
Location
UK
Notable it's necessary to go to the other side of the world half a generation ago to find an example of such an accident. From the Bad Old Days of BR etc I can't recall a single accident where making up time was even a factor ...

I can think of many incidents that are a consequence of a Driver being overly concerned with time.


One expects certainly from rail drivers that they are fully competent and able to understand completely what reasonable speeds they can do.

Are you suggesting we should be allowed to speed ? If the previous linespeed was 60mph for example and they changed it to 50mph should we therefore, be allowed to push 60mph if we felt it ok ?
 

bramling

Veteran Member
Joined
5 Mar 2012
Messages
17,685
Location
Hertfordshire / Teesdale
SNCF in France used to actually pay loco crews a bonus for recovering time when they had been delayed. The day of the year all looked forward to was the spring night when the clocks went forward, and overnight services were paid for recovering 60 minutes.

Notable it's necessary to go to the other side of the world half a generation ago to find an example of such an accident. From the Bad Old Days of BR etc I can't recall a single accident where making up time was even a factor ...


Such hyperbole is inappropriate. It's like those who impose 20mph speed limits on main roads in towns and then pretend that 21mph, allowed for generations, is now automatically Reckless Driving at any time. One expects certainly from rail drivers that they are fully competent and able to understand completely what reasonable speeds they can do.

No driver is ever going to have the knowledge of why a given section of track has a given speed limit. Remember the Watford accident where a seemingly strange PSR was actually a fundamental part of making the signal design compliant with standards.

Yes speeding used to occur, indeed I don’t doubt there were places where it was standard practice. London Underground in particular was rife for this. This was all in the days before data and incident recorders.
 

DanDaDriver

Member
Joined
5 May 2018
Messages
338
I can think of many incidents that are a consequence of a Driver being overly concerned with time.




Are you suggesting we should be allowed to speed ? If the previous linespeed was 60mph for example and they changed it to 50mph should we therefore, be allowed to push 60mph if we felt it ok ?


TSR’s are just a best case scenario really...
 

GW43125

Established Member
Joined
8 Dec 2014
Messages
2,045
I can think of many incidents that are a consequence of a Driver being overly concerned with time.

For a start, I give you Nuneaton, 1975. Driver missed the unlit board because he was trying to work out why he was late. 6 dead.
 

Eccles1983

On Moderation
Joined
4 Sep 2016
Messages
841
Eltham well hall - 1976. 6 dead 100+ injured
Morpeth 1976- 6 dead 100+ injured.
Nuneaton 1975 - 6 dead 70+ injured.
Paddington 1984 6 injured


All accidents due to excess speed.

Making up time is an risk that only the foolish or foolhardy attempt nowadays. There is little a driver can actually do to make up time - in practice they should be driving as fast as possible anyway.

Late braking is one way of making a few seconds up. But no manager worth their salt is going to promote it as it's pointless.
 

Deafdoggie

Established Member
Joined
29 Sep 2016
Messages
3,035
For a start, I give you Nuneaton, 1975. Driver missed the unlit board because he was trying to work out why he was late. 6 dead.

Morpeth 1969, 6 dead and 21 injured. Driver worried about a letter he had had about a previous late running.
 

Belperpete

Established Member
Joined
17 Aug 2018
Messages
1,581
Do any of the more recent systems give any indication of what it's going to do before it actually does it? I understand that that's one of the problems with intervening - by the time you know that it's going to do something baffling, it's already done it and it's then often too late to do anything about it. From conversations that I've had with signalmen though, there does seem to be a reluctance to intervene even where it is possible. The most recent example was when the "wonderful machine", as the signalman put it, held us - when we were ready for a right-time departure - for a late-runner that didn't arrive in the station, without conflict, until a couple of minutes after we should've left, and wouldn't have been ready for another three or four minutes as the driver needed to change ends (we were both class 1 with no station stops or conflicts before our paths diverged a few miles later). That does fit with @contrad!ction 's suggestion that they tend to give priority to late-runners, but in this case it would've knocked us for 7-8 minutes vs no further delay to either service (in the end, the signalman did intervene, but we were already late by then and subsequently knocked the other service as a result).
You can certainly interrogate ARS to find out why it has NOT set a route for a particular train, but I don't think that it gives any warning of what it's about to do. ARS does its calculations dynamically, continually checking the forward route ahead of each train and setting each route as soon as it becomes free (subject to timetable and other constraints). If every time it set a route, it first had to give a warning of what it is about to do, with sufficient time for the signaller to evaluate that decision and intervene if he thinks necessary, it would make the system far too slow. The ARS can be programmed to wait for timetable, and/or to wait for the TRTS plunger to be pressed before setting the route - this can help in cases such as where trains turn-back or change crew, so that the route isn't set for a train that is nowhere near ready to depart, so as not to block the route for a train that is ready. Where trains conflict, it will calculate which route to set first based on quite a large number of factors, including the knock-on effects of each decision. So if letting you out first could have added further delay to the other train that could not be recovered, or impacted on other services down the line, that might be considered worse than holding your train if that had the potential for recovery and little down-stream impact. Or it could be as simple as someone had specifically programmed the ARS to ensure the connection was made, or to give the other train priority over yours. As said by a previous poster, the system is only as good as the information it is programmed with.
 

ijmad

Established Member
Joined
7 Jan 2016
Messages
1,810
Location
UK
Maybe Network Rail should just turn the third rail up to 900V for a few hours in areas where there's been some disruption.

That'll work fine, right?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top