Broken & Late Ltd: Britain's Railways

[Moonlight Shadow]

My easy commute has become rather more complicated nowadays....

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

The timetable is certainly padded on our line. My journey time in the evening has gone up from 47 minutes to 56 minutes, and the extra time is mostly being spent waiting just outside rather than at stations (I'm sure the people going to Northallerton are delighted with having to wait an extra 5-6 minutes in the carriage in full view of the platform and the repeated announcements from the conductor that no, the train has not broken down, this is a scheduled stop and we'll move to the platform soon.)

What was your previous train and which one do you catch now.

Can't find any YRK-MBR services that used to do it in 47 minutes?

[Fussbudget]

Yeah I get off at Thornaby on the way back for boring bus reasons. Used to catch the 18.16 and now getting the 17.38 or 18.46.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Tim O'Tool departs First Group.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah I get off at Thornaby on the way back for boring bus reasons. Used to catch the 18.16 and now getting the 17.38 or 18.46.

Is the timing of the bus unnecessarily inconvenient? 630,000 passengers a year at Thornaby Station. That sounds a decent number to have a few post-work buses running. I get that councils haven't got much money, but even so. It's my inclination to blame the bus rather than the train in every case.

Buses is one thing I'm very much with Corbyn on, and where he can make a difference for probably not much more money.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Yeah I get off at Thornaby on the way back for boring bus reasons. Used to catch the 18.16 and now getting the 17.38 or 18.46.

This is to do with the path that has now been offered from York to the Middlesbrough services. Basically, the TPE timetable is now all built around an even interval of services between Manchester and Leeds. This has moved the Middlesbrough services to being about 25 minutes later off York. In there old path, they could run all the way from York to Northallerton on the 125mph fast lines, except a quick dive onto the slow lines to use the platform at Thirsk.

The new timetable sees the trains run fast line to Thirsk for the station stop. However, due to them being passed by the ECML premeir service, the xx00 Kings Cross - Edinburgh service, the Middlesbrough services must run on the 75 mph slow line to Longland Junction, just shy of Northallerton where the slow lines join the fast lines, and are then booked to wait there for two minutes for the VTEC service to pass. This means that departure from Thirsk to departure from Northallerton has gone from taking eight minutes to now taking 12 or 13 minutes.

The other issue is to do with timing allowances. As trains will always pick up delays, due to things like speed restrictions from engineering work or interactions with other delayed trains, there is a requirement that all train schedules have a set amount of recovery time built into them to absorb the late running. These can be put in at various points within a trains schedule. Previously, the Middlesbrough services, had their Perfromance allowances mostly prior to York, so there was no padding in the schedule from York onwards. With the new timetable, in order to keep the even spread through the core Manchester-York corridor, the perfromance allowances have been transferred to the latter parts of the journey. In the old timetable, the 1816 just had 1 min performance allowance at Yarm. For the new timetable, the 1738 has half a minute pathing at Skelton junction, then a minute engineering allowance at Thirsk, Yarm and Thornaby, so 3.5 minutes extended journey time because of that. The 1846 has a minute engineering at Thirsk and three and a half at Yarm, plus a minute perfromance allowance at Yarm and Thornaby, so has 6.5 minutes of make up time for you to experience. As an aside, the old timetable generally had a two minute allowance between Thornaby and Middlesbrough, which has been removed, so the journey time to Middlesbrough hasn't been extended to the same extent that to Thornaby has.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm crayonning in HS2 going past Northallerton before it joins the East Coast Mainline, to help Fussbudget out.

[Third rate Leszno]

Not been following things closely but what was going on with Northern Rail yesterday? I was on a Pendolino coming back from Euston and we were two minutes out from Lime Street when we stopped and the train manager came on to say that they'd just found out that Northern had left two Units blocking our platform, so we'd be sitting there 20 odd minutes while they went and found someone to move them.

When we eventually arrived (35" late), there were four Units stacked up empty on platform 7 and the London Midland service had only just managed to squeeze itself on at the far end behind them.

[Fussbudget]

Cheers BBoF. Sorry to double down on the parochial questions, but since you're here do you please know what the deal is with the 8.57 from Boro to York, which is nominally an off-peak train but on which off-peak return tickets are seemingly not valid?

Tubbs, the bus service around here is actually pretty good (at least in town), but the problem is the lack of integration between the different operators. Stagecoach and Arriva run the bulk of the services but there's no joint travelcard/season ticket scheme so regular travellers can either stick to one operator's routes, or stump up for two separate season tickets which are hardly cheap to begin with (cheapest monthly ones are £50 and £63 respectively, which together would almost get you a zone 1-2 travelcard in London) and don't cover the smaller/more marginal operators like Stagecarriage and Go North East.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Fares aren't something that I know too much detail about, but from my experience, off peak is generally around 0930. Speaking with those from the fares team, in times past it seems that there used to be a train at just after 0900 from MBR to York, which had a relaxation to permit it to be an off peak service. Over time that has crept back to 0826, which made it possibly the earliest off peak ticket on the network. There was an attempt to rectify this last year, with an 0930 cut off, but this made both the 0826 and 0926 off Borough as peak time trains. There was an outcry and it was relented that the 0926 was off peak, but I think the 0826 was still peak? In the new timetable, the 0857 qualifies to be a peak time ticket.

The strange thing for me is the lack of a peak ticket route Yarm, as they all seem to be Any Permitted Route, which means they are valid via Darlington so are comparative East Coast ML pricing, so are more expensive. If there was some movement to be done on pricing, it would be for a TPE only peak ticket or season ticket.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Can the Tees Mayor do anything about the lack of bus integration?

[Fussbudget]

Thanks BBoF, and yes a TPE only peak fare on that route would really help.

Tubbs, I don't know about the Tees Valley mayor (who let's not forget is a Tory) but Middlesbrough council are supposedly looking into using the new Bus Services Act to introduce franchising.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hope they can improve it.

A certain Boris Johnson worked uncomplainingly with the bus powers he had as mayor.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I have to rely on TPE to take me home now, the Northern service i need has been cancelled the last 3 days....2 miles walk as it does not stop at ERL.

I gather Northern is having training issue, lots of cancellations due to crew member not available

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Moonlight Shadow]

Oh, i have a new interim timetable to deal with now....until end of July...joy!

[Tubby Isaacs]

Did it work today?

Assuming Ginger Yellow's line ok now.

[Ginger Yellow]

Apart from the broken down train at London Bridge and the broken down train at Cannon Street, my journey was fine. Only half an hour late for work today!

[Tubby Isaacs]

Progress.

On the plus side, my Hereford- Birmingham train seems better than it used to be. Lots of work done by Bromsgrove.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Hmm, GTR may be regretting the bold statement they put on the pens they circulated to the rest of the industry.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Second day in a row without issues on the interim timetable....there is hope for my service...Probably helps it goes no further than Huyton too, Lime Street being closed.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nearly missed my flight this morning because the earliest Thameslink to Gatwick was 25 minutes late, and the one after it was cancelled.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I'm in a fairly one sided battle with Virgin Trains over a Delay Repay claim from February. I made the claim the next day, from my phone on the return journey. The website requires you to upload a photo of your tickets to accompany your claim. However I had etickets, so I explained this and uploaded a screen shot. I got a reply a couple of weeks later saying I need to upload a photo of the tickets. I explained again I had etickets, and provided the booking references and eticket references.

After a few weeks without reply, I made a complaint and got an email asking for a photo of the tickets. Explained again, provided the details, then nothing.

Made another complaint, no reply. Have sent multiple emails using the claim reference number but they are all being ignored.

I've made another complaint today.

Where do I go next? I've looked at Transport Focus but they want to see the train company's response to the complaint before they pursue it? So if the train company never responds you can't ever escalate it?

It's only £40 but I'm not giving up, out of principle.

I know the moral of this story - if you book through Virgin directly you get the money back automatically, but that is restrictive practice in itself.

[Ginger Yellow]

Maybe try Which or a newspaper consumer agony aunt.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Maybe try Which or a newspaper consumer agony aunt.

From what I hear it's not that unique - apparently six months or more isn't that uncommon.