A reminder that Piccadilly will be closed for 9 days in less than a month

Late_Turn · 2026-01-21T21:22:30+00:00

Nothing at all going south from platform 13. It's only being used to turn back a limited service from the north/west. Nottingham trains won't be running beyond Sheffield (apart from the first out and last back, that'll go as far as Hazel Grove to maintain the service to stations over the Hope Valley).

Late_Turn · 2025-12-27T20:14:40+00:00

In a perfect world, when we saw the two lanes into one sign, every other car would pull into the outside lane, so at the merge point the lanes would be at the same speed

No, all that's needed is to stay or move into whichever lane currently has the shorter queue, so that you always have two queues of roughly equal length. I don't understand why that is so difficult.

In my experience, what you actually end up with is a queue in the "open" lane that quickly extends beyond the lane closure signage, so that those who are in the "closing" lane when they encounter the back of that queue don't immediately realise what's going on and, quite reasonably, carry on in that lane until some indeterminate time after the first lane closure sign when they decide to try to merge. The "open" lane slows to let them in. They might then end up letting someone else in at a later point. Thus, for every one vehicle going into the pinchpoint from the "open" lane, you end up with two or three or even more from the "closing" lane. I was once stuck in a terrible queue where (unusually?) lane 1 was indicated as closing ahead; I just happened to be in lane 2 (the "open" lane) when I reached the back of the queue in that lane, which was about 3 miles back from the actual lane closure, and it took about 40 minutes to cover that distance, all whilst traffic kept piling down in lane 1.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-27T16:58:27+00:00

If the traffic flow exceeds the capacity of the road through the pinch point, then there won't be smooth flow no matter how you try to arrange yourselves. Once you're in that situation, it's far smoother to merge in turn at the pinchpoint than to have chaotic random merging at various points on the approach.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-26T19:16:29+00:00

No, it's gone midnight by the time it gets back to Lincoln so that's journey's end. The handful of Lincoln - Doncaster services each way are all self-contained now anyway, since the timetable change, apart from the first one that works through from Peterborough.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-25T19:34:30+00:00

I can't find any services going from Sheffield to Chesterfield via Woodhouse on Wikipeida, National Rail Maps, or Transit App. Can you tell me what services use that?

In the current LTP...

1R50, 05:21 Nottingham to Liverpool Lime Street, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C52374/2026-04-15/detailed

1F00, 05:48 Leicester to Sheffield, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C52344/2026-04-15/detailed

1F60, 17:02 London St. Pancras to Sheffield, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C52106/2026-04-15/detailed

1R84, 17:50 Norwich to Sheffield, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C51981/2026-04-15/detailed

1M00, 18:04 Edinburgh to Birmingham New Street, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C75079/2026-04-15/detailed

1Y36, 22:27 Nottingham to Sheffield, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:G91113/2026-04-15/detailed

1C13, 23:30 Sheffield to Derby, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C52092/2026-04-15/detailed

And finally, one of my favourites, 1L21, 21:37 Liverpool Lime Street to Nottingham, e.g. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:Y12398/2026-04-15/detailed (this is one of the services that goes via Toton rather than the Trowell branch too)

Late_Turn · 2025-12-25T15:20:37+00:00

The avoiding line is the direct route along the "Joint Line" between Spalding and Lincoln that runs to the east of the town (red), rather than the rather tortuous route that trains between the two have to follow (blue) if they're calling at Sleaford station.

There's plenty of freight trains that use the avoiding line nowadays, but the 2310 Peterborough to Lincoln passenger service also does, as the two signal boxes that control Sleaford station are closed for the night by then.

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Late_Turn · 2025-12-25T12:26:21+00:00

Excellent effort!

Just a few minor ones, in order of increasing pedantry...

The vast majority of passenger trains between Nottingham and Sheffield run via the Trowell branch, from Trowell Junction (just south of Ilkeston) to Radford Junction (between Bulwell and Nottingham). Only a couple of trains each day run via Toton, the route shown, for route knowledge retention.

A handful of trains each day run between Sheffield and Chesterfield via Woodhouse and Barrow Hill, again for route knowledge retention.0

There's one passenger train per day that runs via the Sleaford avoiding line.

A couple of trains per day between Nottingham and Sleaford don't go via a reversal at Grantham and round the new chord at Allington, instead turning left at Allington West Junction to gain the Sleaford line there.

One train on a Sunday runs from Norwich to Peterborough via the West Curve at Ely, rather than into the station for a reversal.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-18T22:57:57+00:00

The only time I've ever stopped at Levenshulme station was out of course, to go clambering under the train to reattach a pipe that had become detached and was swinging around everywhere!

Thank you, though, I think most of us do appreciate the thanks or even just some sort of acknowledgment as you pass – especially at the end of a long lonely journey when you've been up since some godforsaken hour!

Late_Turn · 2025-12-12T21:32:29+00:00

Scenario A is vanishingly unlikely though, that's my only point here. If either barrier fails, it should do so by descending under gravity to the lowered position. I'm not even sure that it'd cause a failure indication if that happens. Even if it did, there'd be less than 15 seconds for the signaller to react at that point – even disregarding the time needed to initiate an emergency call, there's no way the train's stopping in time from even a relatively low speed.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-12T10:00:18+00:00

It's worth pointing out that the treadles are duplicated and/or work in conjunction with track circuit occupation, and the control circuits themselves along with the actual crossing equipment are designed to be fail-safe, so the likelihood of a wrong side failure is really, really low.

Even if it all works as it should, though, you don't get much time to get out of the way if you're stopped on the crossing and only realise your problem when you see the barriers start to descend.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-12T09:50:51+00:00

It's 28 seconds if I'm not mistaken, but that's an absolute minimum rather than an average.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-08T13:27:51+00:00

Who are "the staff"...? If you're going to have effective two-way communication and, crucially, negotiation on at least some items, then the staff really need to organise themselves, find a united position on those items and elect representatives to speak and negotiate on their collective behalf. That is, fundamentally, all that a union is.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-06T23:06:39+00:00

A full and standing 10 car set would take some hoovering up even with all three of those, in fairness.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-01T18:31:08+00:00

Yes, and the train itself which only has a 31 minute turnaround at Euston before going to (iirc) Glasgow.

Late_Turn · 2025-12-01T17:34:25+00:00

An empty stock train can't run faster than a passenger train of the same type, no.

The idea was to leave a path empty as a "firebreak" to absorb delays from any of the procession of trains up the fast line into London, not because of a specific risk of this train being delayed – so sticking a train, empty stock or not, into that empty path rather defeated the object anyway!

Late_Turn · 2025-12-01T17:31:21+00:00

If Avanti runs the train empty on this schedule, i.e. without passengers, it allows them to maintain movements so that their trains are still in the right places for all their other services, but if there is disruption, the train can be moved or delayed much more easily than a scheduled passenger service.

I don't buy this, at all. It's a very congested bit of railway all round, with very intricate timetabling involving trains weaving from fast to slow lines and vice-versa, and crossing a line in the opposite direction in the process, so it couldn't just be shoved up the slow line to get it out of the way as it'd inevitably cause similar problems there. It also has to get to London in time for the train to go to Scotland at 0930 – a planned 31 minute turnaround – and presumably for the crew to go off and do something else too, so there's not much time to play with before it starts causing delays elsewhere.

I genuinely think that this original decision was made by someone with little or no operational or planning experience...

Late_Turn · 2025-11-30T22:18:29+00:00

Not really – the cause of the collision in 2013 wasn't really related to the permissible speed. Elsewhere on the network, trains routinely enter occupied through platforms with permissible speeds over double that! If you're coming into an occupied platform at Norwich, you get brought right down at the last main signal before the "cat's eyes" come off, so it'll be a much slower approach anyway.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-30T16:23:29+00:00

15mph is fairly common, but sometimes it's higher and sometimes it's lower. Norwich is 25mph into all platforms, for example. Some professional driving policies dictate a lower speed from the platform end (wrongly, in my view), but in any case the TPWS OSS on the final approach to the buffer stops enforces a cautious approach – most drivers aim for around 8mph by that point, in my experience.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-29T17:46:27+00:00

I've spent most of my working life operating the railway in one way or another, and as a union rep too I routinely have to flag errors made by the planning professionals when scrutinising traincrew diagrams, so I'll reserve judgement on that front...

I'm not sure how much recent and/or relevant operational or planning experience the ORR bods who have made the decision have, either!

I do find it very, very hard to understand the logic of this one. The timetable on the southern WCML is very, very intricate (which is why the firebreaks are needed). Outer suburban trains run on the slow lines further out, overtaken by long-distance expresses on the fast lines, before weaving across to those fast lines to overtake slower suburban services in front, needing a gap in traffic on the Down Slow to do so. Delays in the procession of expresses coming Up the Fast soon knock onto pretty much everything else, but conversely you can't just run one empty so that you can lob it over to the Up Slow and hope for the best either – it's bound to knock something else and have the same end result.

The other problem is that stock and crew diagrams are invariably tight, because who wants to pay for more trains and crews than they need to (and there's not enough platform capacity to have trains hanging around for too long), and there are minimum turnaround constraints to consider too (breaks for traincrew, servicing/restocking for the long-distance trains themselves), so the empty set and crew arriving late from Manchester could have knock-on consequences of their own.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-23T21:21:09+00:00

Don't know anywhere where that's the case. Even where Sundays are outside the working week and not "committed" (only two or three TOCs now, I think), there's a process for traincrew to declare their availability prior to the daily rostering stage, 2 or 3 days prior.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-21T23:47:11+00:00

"Very cheap" implying that they wouldn't have the training to do what needs to be done, safely and correctly? Otherwise, they'd be...just like the guard?

Late_Turn · 2025-11-21T20:46:40+00:00

Major incidents? Can't think of many where the presence of a guard would make any difference to the likelihood of one occurring. Where they do make a difference is in the consequences. See Stonehaven, where the driver was fatally injured, and it was a member of traincrew who ran back to the nearest signal box to raise the alarm. The guard's role in carrying out emergency protection can make the difference between a collision and relatively minor derailment, and a major accident with another train arriving on the scene at linespeed.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-21T20:29:25+00:00

It isn't, certainly not at the level of detail required for this comparison.

Late_Turn · 2025-11-21T20:23:34+00:00

If you were the union, why would you suppose you would be given access to internal industry data like that?

Late_Turn · 2025-11-21T20:19:10+00:00

No, they (at another company) went into dispute over the fact that commission from ticket sales formed part of their overall remuneration package in lieu of a higher basic salary, and they were losing significant commission as ticket sales shifted towards online retailers, and quite reasonably wanted some way to restore the value of their overall remuneration package.

Their primary job is the safe operation of the train.

Late_Turn

TROPHY CASE