WTT for District 1950 Redux.

Could it be that the booked R48 train failed (the R stock were still brand new then) and it was replaced by a Q stock working?

I have come to the conclusion that this was a block train made up of whatever they had available. Examination of various photos taken through the years shows that they made up trains with whatever stock was available at the time. They were still doing it in the sixties when I started working. It was common for trains to be Q6 instead of R6 or whatever. They normally tried to keep uncoupling trains of the right stock so theyy could couple again in the evenings, otherwise it was a free for all. There are even photos of train made up of all motor cars.

1949:

D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Upminster RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Dagenham East Barking RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 East Ham (Little Ilford Sidings) RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Plaistow, Whitechapel, Cromwell and Triangle RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Parsons Green and Ealing Broadway RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Acton Town, Northfields, Ealing Common 1 RS Working
D&P WTT 59 23/5/49 Ealing Common 2 RS Working

Now, for a bit of digging in the 1950 WTT, as we've got a date for the picture of the 29th June 1950 I'm going to try a bit of sleuthing to put a (booked) time to the pictures.

Having 'clickety clicked', a question. How common was it in those days for a train to start from one depot and stable at another the opposite end, as in this case?

Aha! After angelislington has worked her wonderful magic with keyboard shortcuts on the data:



* are the Evening Trains for events at West Ham Stadium.
Ety are positioning moves, and as such are only for the workings Monday - Thursday inclusive.
| means 'nothing' - a character needs to be inserted to keep the table demons happy in the translation between Excel, Notepad and the Forum.

The table largely speaks for itself; but I will put some commentary on a couple of moves later; including the early morning staff train from Hammersmith (Q28).

Isn't AI a star!

Edit: She's even more of a star, because she's just taught me how to do it! ;D ;D

Start time across the combine - earliest starter is No 1 - I was going to mention this in the summary, but I can say in passing that it 'rolls over' the normal day from the point of view of the analysis reference - I need to do a bit more checking to prove it (it's only a gut feeling with this particular WTT) but Q1 was the first starter from Little Ilford at 12.37am (although for the table above it started at Northfields 7.35am the day before ;D) Compare the data extraction above with the 1950 RS working sheets and it is far from random - what is difficult to calculate is exactly what happened overnight with intra-depot allocations, plus exactly when things were diagrammed - eg getting the tanks to certain places where high capacity was needed. I didn't bother putting the times in, as that would require an awful lot more work, sorry.



I think that the stock type was generally the same the next day, some locations were quite straightforward to work out - again look at the detailed images from the WTTs and you get a clearer picture of what comes into roost and what goes off again.

To answer the question about to-day's diagrams system-wide isn't that easy - depots have closed (Little Ilford Cromwell), depots have opened (Stonebridge Park, Upminster), and depots are no longer used for the District (Northfields), places are also not used Plaistow (Bay Road), South Ken (Bay Road) and platforms are rarely used. However present day timetables have separate 'depot working' and 'rolling stock working' pages so changeover turns are easier to spot eg. Walthamstow/Victoria/Brixton outstablers. Bear in mind too that I haven't included the uncoupling information - you can get a clue to that from the aggregated bits of units that are worked back at the end of the day.

I'll leave it there, because I'm an utter amateur compared to others.

This is excellent stuff MRFS and nice formatting from AI. One thing to bear in mind from your last list is that the stock which was Q28 and went into EC Dt at 4.30am might not have been used for the Q28 07.13 departure. It could easily have been a different train. This was normal practice for midday stablers. For example, the three F Stock "Lunch" stablers you list at East Ham did not necessarily have to be the same ones doing the three afternoon departures. When I worked at Upminster, it was common to choose units needing lifting to go on pm starters which ended up at Ealing Common, as the lifting capacity at Upminster was very small.

And now for something related but different.

Following on from the start times/numbering queries, I offer the following selection of images, from the Set Working book for WTTs 73 (Mon-Fri; Sat) and 74 (Sundays) - I've not got either of these WTTs to hand, so I don't know the reason for the reissue of the book in January 1956. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is something to do with the renumbering of sets 34, 38 and 45 (pp 7 and 9).

Please feel free to look at the images and see if you can come up with a rationale for the numbering - I'm a bit busy with other things needing drawing and scanning to really deleve into an analysis; but this might help anyone who is interested.

Title page, Notes page;

Mondays - Fridays[/b]
pp2/3 Sets 1-13, pp4/5 MF Sets 14-25, pp6/7 Sets 25-36, pp8/9 Sets 36-46, pp10/11 Sets 46-53, pp 12/13 Sets 54-61, pp 14/15 Sets 62-72, pp 16/17 Sets 73-81;

Saturdays
pp 18/19 Sets 1-14, pp 20/21 Sets 14-23, pp 22/23 Sets 24-36, pp 24/25 Sets 27-49, pp 26/27 Sets 50 - 57, pp 28/29 Sets 57-67, pp 30/31 Sets 67-79, pp 32/33 Set 80;

Sundays
pp 32/33 Sets 1-6, pp 34/35 Sets 6-16, pp 36/37 Sets 16-24, pp 38/39 Sets 24-28 and District Sunday Circle Sets 60 and 70 ;

South Acton Shuttle (all week).

Also available as a .pdf if you ask by PM.

As you can see, the information is presented in a slightly different manner to the Rolling Stock Working sheets. There are a lot of outstanding questions in this, and I honestly suspect that the order of the numbering related to what manila folder the timetable office were using for each depot, later set working books are far more rigidly arranged around the start time. I suppose that it would be worth commenting that the set numbers were not at this time constrained by Programme Machines, which played merry wotsit with a 'sensible' numbering order - gaps above 77, 177, 277 and nothing after 377.

If anyone can fathom out a reasoning, please let me know!

Set numbers were certainly in use on the Met. pre-electrification, immediately post electrification there were a selection of set numbers: Exx for ordinary electric trains, Fxx for Local trains, and then Axx, Bxx, Cxx for the classes of other trains.

However, I've seen a WTT for the opening of the Ealing and South Harrow and the units were not numbered, and any alteration in working was referenced to the train time eg. 'on weekdays all trains shall be formed of 2 cars, except on Saturdays, when (commencing with the 12.0 and 12.30 trips from South Harrow) they will be formed of 4 cars.

I think set numbering came in sometime between 1903 and 1908, and was certainly in place by June 1908. One for TP to answer really, I suspect numbering was needed after the introduction of uncoupling.