Up and Down lines in UK

[DavidGrain]

Am I right in thinking that, although Up and Down relates to the lines, it is no longer (or rarely) used in respect of trains? Odds and Even headcodes on Southern Region trains used to distinguish between Charring Cross and Canon Street. trains.

I am reminded of the classic Spoonerism 'Please leave Oxford on the next Town Drain'.

 

[hexagon789]

There’s no standard pattern for train reporting numbers. Sometimes the second character is the same for trains in both directions on a particular route, with one direction being odd numbers and the other being even numbers. More often than not, it isn’t. It wouldn’t work as a general rule anyway, with so many trains changing from Up to Down en-route.

Thanks, I couldn't seem to find examples to suit that idea

 

[DavidGrain]

An example of a line where odd numbers run one way and even numbers the other way is Stourbridge Town. Trains to Stourbridge Town have odd numbers and trains from Stourbridge Town have even numbers. And with a train departing every ten minutes they have to restart at 2P00 just after midday. If you want to go Down Town you can get a down train down the hill. A rare picture of 139001 and 139002 out on the track together. The Do Not Move flag is to preserve the One Train in Service regulations

Railways in Worcestershire miac.org.uk

 

[furnessvale]

I understand that the Lancashire and Yorkshire were up to Manchester Victory.

Any railway that was not London orientated used its own major centre to decide up and down.

In the mid 1960s the line from Preston to Blackburn changed its up/down orientation at least three times in deference to lines which at that time had closed. e.g., the orientation changed at Cherry Tree as the major route veered off at the closed jcn towards Wigan.

 

[davetheguard]

Consider a Reading to Gatwick Airport train:

From Reading it is an UP train;
Through Guildford station it is an UP train travelling in a DOWN direction;
Once across Shalford Junction, it's purely an UP train;
On arrival at Redhill, it reverses, and becomes a DOWN train.

Simples!

 

[LAX54]

Headcodes: GEML/ GE Rurals Odds on the Up Evens on the down. VSTP moves, random !

 

[S&CLER]

Any railway that was not London orientated used its own major centre to decide up and down.

In the mid 1960s the line from Preston to Blackburn changed its up/down orientation at least three times in deference to lines which at that time had closed. e.g., the orientation changed at Cherry Tree as the major route veered off at the closed jcn towards Wigan.

And I'd imagine that Colne-Skipton, being ex-Midland, was also up to Skipton, and that mileages ran from St Pancras. I bet the mileposts disappeared long since, perhaps to the old BR Collector's Corner. On Blackburn-Hellifield, oddly, the mileage runs from zero at Farington Curve Junction near Preston and not from Manchester Vic.

 

[TheSel]

... On the British railway, for every rule, there are exceptions!

What are the exceptions to that rule?

 

[Bill EWS]

Isn't there another thread on this subject going already! I seem to recall commenting on it. Everything leading into London is called the 'Up' line and going away from London is the 'Down' line. On the north side of the Thames you run into the terminal stations on the 'Up'. However, on the south side of the Thames you run from the south coast 'Up' to London and 'Down' heading southwards.

Running across the country Up & Down is governed by the direction the junction with the next main line whether the points turn you northwards (On to the Down) or if southwards you run onto the Up line. Some branches may stick to the same as the main line for half the way but change to suit the direction of the next junction with the main line.

 

[Eloise]

Am I right in thinking that, although Up and Down relates to the lines, it is no longer (or rarely) used in respect of trains? Odds and Even headcodes on Southern Region trains used to distinguish between Charring Cross and Canon Street. trains.

I am reminded of the classic Spoonerism 'Please leave Oxford on the next Town Drain'.

Headcodes should do that but over the years they've lost their way a little. Even worse when you see the hidden fifth and sixth characters (e.g. 1A01AA) which do have a structure but that has lost its way massively and sometimes reflect the initials of the Planner. I think Thameslink may be odd and even by direction.

 

[SteelWeelApeal]

Perhaps worthy of a new thread, but what service swaps most between the up direction and down direction? I’d imagine something XC or transpennine, although Great Malvern to Brighton must be fairly high up the list too.

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

An example of a line where odd numbers run one way and even numbers the other way is Stourbridge Town. Trains to Stourbridge Town have odd numbers and trains from Stourbridge Town have even numbers. And with a train departing every ten minutes they have to restart at 2P00 just after midday. If you want to go Down Town you can get a down train down the hill. A rare picture of 139001 and 139002 out on the track together. The Do Not Move flag is to preserve the One Train in Service regulations

Slightly (!) at a tangent, but I have just turned up a TOPS printout concerning the 'Train Status Code' (aka T-Speed), dated 8/10/2005. Using all 10 characters of a Train ID allowed the running of up to 12 trains an hour with the same headcode. The example given was the Stourbridge Shuttle, so between 0900 and 0929 they all ran as 2H66:
0900 became 652H66MEdd;
0904 became 652H66NEdd;
0908 became 652H66OEdd;
0916 became 652H66AEdd;
0922 became 652H66BEdd;
0926 became 652H66CEdd. (M is the first choice for Passenger trains; E is the code for 0900 to 0929; dd is the Date.)
May knowing the originating area (65 in this case) inform whether an odd or an even number is used?
Pat

 

[edwin_m]

Perhaps worthy of a new thread, but what service swaps most between the up direction and down direction? I’d imagine something XC or transpennine, although Great Malvern to Brighton must be fairly high up the list too.

I've already posted that the NE-SW route is up towards Derby in both directions. Transpennine is up towards Manchester Victoria in both directions but a train towards the Airport will only be Down for a short distance leaving Victoria, changing to Up somewhere around the Ordsall Chord. I don't have time right now to look up Great Malvern to Brighton!

 

[DavidGrain]

Slightly (!) at a tangent, but I have just turned up a TOPS printout concerning the 'Train Status Code' (aka T-Speed), dated 8/10/2005. Using all 10 characters of a Train ID allowed the running of up to 12 trains an hour with the same headcode. The example given was the Stourbridge Shuttle, so between 0900 and 0929 they all ran as 2H66:
0900 became 652H66MEdd;
0904 became 652H66NEdd;
0908 became 652H66OEdd;
0916 became 652H66AEdd;
0922 became 652H66BEdd;
0926 became 652H66CEdd. (M is the first choice for Passenger trains; E is the code for 0900 to 0929; dd is the Date.)
May knowing the originating area (65 in this case) inform whether an odd or an even number is used?
Pat

Thanks Pat, It looks as if the system has changed in that the the shuttle trains do not have the same number repeating within the hour. I have just looked at trains running today and the 1205 SBJ-SBT is 652P77MK12 and the 1210 SBT-SBJ is 652P78MK12 which shows a different part of the number changing

EDIT I had to go back to yesterday to find these numbers. The 0650 2P14 was 652P14M611 and the 1510 also 2P14 was 652P14MQ11

 

[O L Leigh]

Perhaps worthy of a new thread, but what service swaps most between the up direction and down direction? I’d imagine something XC or transpennine, although Great Malvern to Brighton must be fairly high up the list too.

Brum to Stansted is Up Down Up Down without reversing, while Brum to Notts is Up Reverse Up Down.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The London tubes, several of which were American financed and controlled in their early days (the Yerkes era), adopted the US habit of referring to eastbound, westbound, northbound etc. I don't know if or when the Met was changed to this practice. On the Circle Line, old timetables refer to "Inner rail" and "Outer rail". In the USA itself, the great majority of railroads were oriented east to west, so they referred to eastbound/westbound tracks, though in some cases the line designation was not the actual compass direction of travel. It was easy to know which direction a given train was, since westbounds bore odd numbers and eastbounds even numbers.

Apart from being common in Europe for odd/even train numbers to signify train direction, it has also been carried forward into the airline world (though it doesn't always apply).
Generally, east/northbound flights globally have odd flight numbers, west/southbound have even.
Airlines also regard their low numbers as being of some prestige (eg QF1 is Qantas' Sydney-London flight for instance, and BA1 was London-New York on Concorde and is now on the London City-New York business class only A318 service).
Our railway totally ignores such marketing opportunities (as well as using confusing TOC abbreviations in timetables)!

 

[edwin_m]

Apart from being common in Europe for odd/even train numbers to signify train direction, it has also been carried forward into the airline world (though it doesn't always apply).
Generally, east/northbound flights globally have odd flight numbers, west/southbound have even.
Airlines also regard their low numbers as being of some prestige (eg QF1 is Qantas' Sydney-London flight for instance, and BA1 was London-New York on Concorde and is now on the London City-New York business class only A318 service).
Our railway totally ignores such marketing opportunities (as well as using confusing TOC abbreviations in timetables)!

The railway does however have names for its most prestige trains, albeit intermittently and depending on the mindset of the TOC in question. It's probably less important these days when one of the selling points of the railway is to have a good service at least every hour on most routes rather than a few crack trains every day.

Most timetables produced by the TOCs show their own trains with no heading and the two-letter code for those operated by others, which they have no particular incentive to advertise. The national timetable on the Network Rail website uses two-letter codes for everyone, but I don't think the rather specialist users of that publication would welcome it being plastered with marketing material.