Great Western Coffee Shop

I see there's a few problems at Marylebone with the signalling today.  The 10:50 to Birmingham Snow Hill has left 11 minutes late.  Live departures still expect it to arrive on time though, mostly thanks to the 16 minutes, yes sixteen minutes, allowed between Birmingham Moor Street and Birmingham Snow Hill.

This is because the normal timetable allows a whopping 13 minutes, but because of leaf fall allowances until the 10th December another 3 minutes of padding is allowed.  I have been on trains between the two stations that have taken just under 2 minutes to do the journey - this is the usual time, it's a journey of 0.75 miles.

Can anybody name a service/route with more padding than that in the timetable, comparing time allowed and distance?  It's just blatantly designed to massage the PPM figures in their favour.  Whilst all TOC's allow a little bit extra time from the penultimate to the terminating station, I think that kind of allowance makes even more of a total mockery of the current system.

The 12:26 FGW stopping service from Southampton Central to Worcester is due into Shrub Hill at 16:21, but doesn't get into Foregate St until 16:42. Partly that's because there's a London Midland service that departs from Foregate St at 16:34.

(For the benefit of strangers, the platforms at FS are essentially two single lines - don't ask).

Even so, it still counts for PPM purposes - 21 minutes for the last leg, which is 5/8 of a mile. I make that 1.8 mile/hour.

And today (as is often the case), it arrived 7 early at Shrub Hill, so even more timetable padding.

Yes, I suppose it does kind of count, though I was more looking for examples where there isn't another contributory factor, in that case the pathetic signalling limitations at Worcester.

"Pathetic" is a bit harsh - "retro" might be better.

There's one advantage about it - very little in the way of copper cables lying about waiting to be stolen!

Does that changes in December?  I've seen note that the 17:02 return working to Southampton will be starting back at Great Malvern ...

 :D

After the December changes, my copy of the RailPlanner software has this train arriving at Shrub Hill at 16:15 and continuing straight on to Foregate St (instead of sitting around for 19 mins), arriving 16:18, and Great Malvern (arr 16:32). Returns to Southampton at 16:49.

Meanwhile, the 10:50 from Marylebone to Snow Hill is reduced to 10 mins from Moor St to Snow Hill.