Timetable padding on Thameslink route

[DVD]

I occasionally travel on the Thameslink route mainly between St Pancras / London Bridge or via the Elephant & Castle route and have often noticed that the service seems to have unduly long stops at most of the central London stations, not just for the 25 V AC to 3rd rail DC changeover at Farringdon.

Today I did several trips on the line, mainly to take a look at the new Blackfriars southern entrance and the new Farringdon ticket hall - both impressive. But what struck me is that at almost every station, there was significant timetable padding greatly exceeding anything I have experienced before. For example, I was on a southbound service which arrived at St Pancras 4 minutes before the scheduled departure time. At Farringdon the wait was at least 3 minutes. Again at Blackfriars there was a 3 to 4 minute wait. There was also a 4 minute wait on the northbound service at Blackfriars.

There was no sign of any technical problems with the trains and it was noticeable that as soon as we left the central area, station dwell times were minimal.

Is this common on First Capital Connect these days ?

 

[Firestarter]

LOL a Thmeslink customer complaining about FCC trains being early.

 

[tsr]

This may be a wild conspiracy theory, but I imagine it could be to avoid wholly plausible stops at stations like Redhill, which see a Thameslink service so rarely that it seems FCC want to be able to think they can get away with very little contribution to station upgrades.

 

[TheJRB]

Timetable padding does seem to be quite a common thing. On a trip to Victoria I made from Ashford in October, we called only at Maidstone East, Otford and Bromley South en route because of engineering works and ended up spending about five minutes at both Maidstone and Otford. This was of course to put people off using that service instead of HS1. But as there's no more expensive faster alternative on the core section of Thameslink, that can't be a reason...

 

[NSEFAN]

Padding allows for recovery to get things back to normal faster when there is disruption. It's certainly not a new thing (it happened under BR too), but I suspect it's more popular now due to how manic the railways are about timekeeping these days. If there's no disruption then the amount of padding becomes very evident.

Even if we never had any signal, points or train failures, there would still be delay because of things beyond the control of the railway, like certain passenger incidents.

 

[Waddon]

Although I naturally like to believe in conspiracies, It might also possibly be as a result of all the work that's going on along the thameslink line changing timings on services, for example maybe earlier speed restrictions may have been lifted after works completed and they will be factored in to future timetables? Although the evil FCC conspiracy sounds more fun...

 

[The Planner]

Not always padding, mostly PTT times vs WTT, and in the case of diversions for engineering work there are set allowances to cover worst case scenarios, so if they don't occur you sit waiting for the booked time or arrive early. The padding argument does make me chuckle sometimes as if you actually looked at WTT schedules there aren't minutes just chucked in for fun.

 

[jopsuk]

Also, given that you're talking about stations where many people both alight and board in the peaks, are these "standard" stop times that are set up for peak passenger numbers? the only flaw with this theory is the need for much shorter stops once the TL project concludes.

 

[Minilad]

Not always padding, mostly PTT times vs WTT, and in the case of diversions for engineering work there are set allowances to cover worst case scenarios, so if they don't occur you sit waiting for the booked time or arrive early. The padding argument does make me chuckle sometimes as if you actually looked at WTT schedules there aren't minutes just chucked in for fun.

Couldn't have put it better myself.
And remember this went on under BR too. Its not something that has only started since privatisation. You will always need a few minutes added here and there for pathing / recovery / engineering. The alternative would be a lot more late trains than at present

 

[Bald Rick]

It's time allowed for the usual peak time dwell times, which with several hundred people alighting and boarding 16 sets of doors (24 on some now!) off crush loaded trains does take a couple of minutes. In the morning southbound trains from the MML are often a minute or so late arriving St Pancras due to being over time at stations further north.

 

[Class377/5]

It's time allowed for the usual peak time dwell times, which with several hundred people alighting and boarding 16 sets of doors (24 on some now!) off crush loaded trains does take a couple of minutes. In the morning southbound trains from the MML are often a minute or so late arriving St Pancras due to being over time at stations further north.

This plays a part as dwell times at Core stations are affected as people tend to use one coach to leave the train. City is a good example where people actually walk through the carriages to leave by the rear most doors even though they've past empty doorways to do so. In peak this becomes a bit of an issue as it extends dwell times.

The other half of the reason is making sure they are right time at St Pancras northbound or Blackfriars southbound. If they didn't leave any padding time then any delay on either end of Thameslink would be sent straight over to the other side. 3mins late into St Pancras may not be a big issue for the MML services but a train 3mins late through London Bridge for example would cause a lot of delays. It's this nature of Thameslink trains passing through so many areas and ability to transmit delays means timetable are padded out.