Great Western Coffee Shop

Just got a copy of Timtable D TV local.

Paddingitis has struck our Taplow service:

Current offpeak 07 Taplow arrive 43 Padd With 10 minutes allowed from Ealing
                      37                    13

New Offpeak 06 Taplow arrive 46 Padd with 13! minutes from Ealing
                 36                     16

Now the train I used to go to work on the 07:23 ex Taplow for years was allowed 7 minute from Ealing. A bit tight but a good driver could do it. We used to take Up Relief to Line 4 at Ladbroke Grove at 70 with the Greenford coming Down 3 to Down Relief quite interesting having the other train rush by at speed on the next track.

Now Ealing is 5.7 miles (5m 56ch in Coooke) from Padd so 7 minutes equals 48.8 mph av whilst 13 minutes equals 26 mph. With 13 minutes I reckon  the driver could stop for a cup of tea at Acton.

Maybe I'll set up a tea stall on the platform.

No doubt you'll get very familiar with Royal Oak tube station as you sit on line 6 outside Paddington waiting for a route in the platform whilst the xx:12 and xx:42 train leaves on line 5.

The journey is 7 minutes with clear signals - you can understand a couple of minutes extra as it's the last stop and FGW wouldn't want to compromise their performance stats, but 13 minutes is stretching that a bit too far! Other services take 10-12 minutes in the new timetable which is also taking the pee a little bit.

It smacks of the service being specified with the actual pathing in and out of Paddington being considered as an afterthought.

Paddingitus has become terminal on the Cotswold line! ;D

Its all being done to lift FGW / NR performance that hovers around 90% to the 92% required by ORR a year ago it was averaging 80%.  My personal theory is that TV area is generally good performing area so it is suffering to compensate for other parts of the FGW franchise, just a personal view

I have just obtained a copy of October 1974 Railway Mag with an analysts of Britian's fastest trains.

This is pre HST, West Coast the wires have got to Glasgow, East Coast is Deltics and WR has just got the 50s.

As you would expect WCML tops with 6 trains from Rugby to Watford at 88.8 mph.
EC comes next with 81.7 1 train Stevenage York.

Then guess who comes next!

Midland Main Line 1 train St. Pancras Wellingborough. at 74.4 mph

Fourth place is also a surprise.

LSWR mainline 13 trains Basinstoke Woking 72.3 mph.

So good old WR is last.

1 train 71.3 from Padd to Exeter.

However of relevance to this post is the GE line with the wires to Clacton.
Fastest 1 Train Witham Colchester 13.1 miles 68.3

But 6 trains over 6.2 miles from Hatfield Peverel - Chemsford in 5 mins 30 secs at 67.6.

Of course these runs were with the magnificent Clacton Electrics (309). Fantastic ride even at 90. Now I know what the techies are going to say. That they guzzled juice and were incredibly heavy due to being fitted with Commonwealth bogies but they still superb sets..

Wonder if a Heathrow connect could do Ealing - Padd at a similar average? Would have to be just  few seconds over 5 minutes, Probably not due to the shorter distance but I would have thought 60 was possible in 5mins 42 secs.

Puts 13 minutes into perspective.

The ATP and TPWS systems would both prevent that from being achieved. Especially on the TPWS buffer stop approaches where you have to be at under 10MPH some distance from the buffer stops. Going the other way would be a better bet, though the 40/50MPH maximum from Paddington-Kensal Green would probably scupper anything that quick.

As an aside, I have been from Reading to Slough in just under 11 minutes which at 17.5 miles works out at an average of 95MPH. And Reading to Paddington in 23 minutes for the 36 miles at an average of 94MPH. Both were in Adelante's.

For anyone interested in 'official' record timings over certain routes, the Railway Performance Society website is an excellent source of information - http://www.railperf.org.uk/ (http://www.railperf.org.uk/)

If the Reading bottleneck is sorted, and 1 or 2 new tracks are installed between Paddington and Reading, FGW might be able to remove padding from timetables.

I still don't understand why the sudden increase.

If it's agreed that 8 minutes is probably a good running time from Ealing to Padd, these trains were already booked 10 so why the increase to 13?

Also why are the Greenfords allowed 13 with a stop at Acton and even weirder the other semi from Oxford is allowed 12 whist Heathrow connect is allowed 10. These inconsistent running times makes it harder for teh driver he has to remember what train he's on and how long he's got or refer to the schedule each time.

To my mind it could lead to complacancy and slackness of working. "There's plenty of time."  A proper railway should be run briskly. That's why we played marches at Waterloo in the morning to get people off the station. 5 minute turnrounds with same crew.

So if they get all greens then they will do Ealing Padd in 7/8 minutes and arrive early.

Or they drive by schedule and potter into Padd taking 13 minutes, but save fuel.

Interesting choice, I prefer 7 or 8 minutes to 13 but then I like my trains to run as fast as they can.

The more I look at it the more I keep asking why?


If our insider can't come up with an explanation who can?

Didn't i notice a suggestion from Electric_Train that it could relate to the need to raise the "on-time" statistics.  Give the trains longer on their final leg, and more will arrive on time, and the TOC will be penalised less  :-\

I'm going to take a somewhat different view for my neck of the woods ... 45 minutes should be plenty for Westbury -> Swindon, but I would be happy to accept a schedule of 55 minutes for a 6 train per day service ... on the grounds that (a) I didn't want to scupper the chance of a service because of the potential for penaltys incurred and (b) 55 minutes is a ruddy site better than 110 minutes by bus!

Trouble would be then that 55 minutes wouldn't leave adequate turnaround time within the ROTP, so it wouldn't happen either.

You are being too generous 45 minutes for 32.5 miles is only 43 mph.

You ought to be looking at 40 minutes even with the stops. After all over half the journey is on a 125 mph mainline. So say 20 minutes to Chippenham for 21.52 miles which gives 20 minutes for less than 11 miles.

Also noticed some strange paddingitis on the Down off peak TV service between Twyford and Reading where time varies between 8 (eg 18:25 ex padd) and 15 (11:12 ex Padd) minutes, but it's not consitant otherr XX:12 departures eg 16:12 are allowed 9.

It doesn't make sense.

The 11:12, 13:12 and 15:12 all arrive at Reading at xx:17, with a lot of padding. Perhaps the variation is caused by pathing time? What other movements are there that might conflict with it...?

Without even considering 'unknowns' (freight, ECS etc), I note that there seems to be a two-hourly pattern here. Coming the other way, in those hours, there's an up train from Cheltenham at around the same time as an arrival from Bristol - so one of them will use platform 8. So as it departs it blocks platform 6-10 arrivals from the east. If the second of the two up arrivals uses 8, there's a departure from Platform 8 at xx:11 (public time). Which means the 11:12 from Padd can't arrive in its 12:11 arrival slot. (Even if the first up train uses 8, leaving at 12:09, a 12:11 arrival from Padd would be too tight.) So if we assume the Bristol-Padd train leaving Reading at 12:11 leaves from Plat 8 (and perhaps it's 12:12 in the working timatable to allow a longer headway behind the Cheltenham-Padd departing at 12:09?). Allow a few minutes then for Reading New Jn to clear to allow the Padd-Reading in, and it's arriving at 12:15-17 (don't know exact margin allowed).

I don't know if that's the reason for the extra time - just an example of what it could be!

The other thing I can think of why there is extra padding being put into the time table is as a preamble to the Reading Station works and its associated signaling works and of course Crossrail works which will involve a lot of ontrack works Maidenhead to Padd with surveying leading up to it all of which may well result in TSR's (temporary speed limits) especially with the planned under GW mainline underpass at Acton from the Mains to the yard, and there is the redevelopment of Hayes and airport junction.  So its either a precursor to that lot or just NR and FGW ensuring they meet ORR 92% target

To be honest, I think it's basically because of what I wrote about Paddington, in a post above...

It smacks of the service being specified with the actual pathing in and out of Paddington being considered as an afterthought.

Just substitute the word 'Paddington' with 'Reading'.

Maybe it would be better to go back to graphing trains.

I did an exercise on one of the previous timetables a couple of years back. What it showed graphically was the bunching at Ealing and the Greenford trying to get onto the Relief as the fast from Slough was crossing the junction.

Even the non cognoscenti  could see that if the first train of the sequence was delayed it would ripple back. Just like the  waves on the motorway.
 

Gosh, I didn't realise global warming had got that bad yet.  ;D ;D

The skills of graphing trains have probably been lost.

Nowadays, the computer does it quicker.

The reason for the average increased journey time of 3 minutes (off peak) is increased performance allowances and to improve "delivery"

Oxford - Pad turbos are also affected by changes to the Cross Country timetable.

Are there any significant XC changes apart from removal of all the Brighton extensions? That removes most of the hassle of XC trains crossing to the SR east of Reading, other than that, as far as I can tell, up and down XC services are running in the same paths they always did , within a minute...

Paul