Reduced service

The D stocks from Wim through the city are the same as usual, every 10 minutes (to Tower Hill). The Ealing branch has got the worst deal ( as always ) only 20 min service to High St Ken ! (Even though Mansion house isn't use this weekend, so no idea why they cant provide a 15 min service Ealing - Mansion!) . And Richmond every 10 minutes to Whitechapel. The H&C are all reversing at Whitechapel which is normal on Sundays anyway! So why on earth is there a reduced C Stock District service ??

I think the answer is partly that and also that there are not enough trains in service to give the normal density - both days there are only 37 trains in service as opposed to 61 or 58 on a 'normal' weekend - *looks into bowels of timetable*

Let's see; just on a random sampling of Wimblewares [1] throughout the day there is usually 6/6½ min at Edgware Road and 12½ min at Wimbledon - in the TTN the turnround allowances are stretched to 15½ at Wimbledon and a dead 6 at Edgware Road - why?

Well, my guess is twofold - with everything reversing at Whitechapel, the stock that would have been in transit East of Whitechapel needs to be removed from the TT; with the Whitechapel reversing everything is going to appear at Earls Court much sooner, so what stock that is left on the larger part of the District needs to be spread out much more, hence the extra
time at Wimbledon.

With the platforms occupied for longer at Wimbledon, more stock needs to be trimmed out of the TT so there isn't blocking back on the branch with trains waiting on platforms at Wimbledon.

Anyway, it's only 8 minutes difference! ;D

I'll have a look later (if I get chance) at the C stock working with the current Eastern District closures (there is something odd going on there) - 15 min Ealing - Mansion would probably looks good on paper but I can hear a little voice whispering at the back of my head 'Blackfriars' Somewhere in the library I have got an example of Ealing Broadway - Manky House shuttles, and I have a sneaking suspiscion that this dates from the era of service reduction/peak cancellations and the total number of trains in service wasn't too far off that inservice with these Eastern closures; perhaps an Ealing - Mansion service may be trying to squeeze too much through and making the service a bit flaky and prone to falling over.

I will see if I can find this Ealing - Mansion service (as you've piqued my interest), but with over 90 District TTs in the library I can only remember it is in there, but not which one.

And 3 yesterday in Triangle (though only 2 today)... so that doesn't explain it :S

Because as I said, all the stations on the Ealing branch bar Chiswick Park already have good enough alternatives available. Chiswick Park on it's own is nowhere near busy enough to justify taking trains away from Richmond.

The Richmond branch normally has a 10 minute 'city' service, so it was business as usual for that branch.

The real crux of the issue here is not what was provided in terms of the train service, IMO, but what wasn't provided in terms of information by the stations side. Trouble is, the stations side of the business is no longer about running a railway; it's about retail and customer service - stations have no interest in the product, they just sell it.

Stations have trains coming and going - as long they get 'em fairly regularly they're generally not much more interested than that.

The main focus for stations is to sell tickets, check tickets (via the barriers) and make announcements as dictated to them. They display posters that are sent to them and perform SATS (platform duties) during the peaks at some stations - the standard of SATS varies wildly but all they're interested in is: train arrives. do PA's as dictated. do something with the bat in their hand. train departs. cycle repeats.

SATS don't know how the service is running - they don't care - trains come and go. As long as trains continue to come and go they're happy as Larry.

There are some extremely good, conscientious station staff out there that really do go the extra mile - unfortunately there's not really many of them, and most are members here.

I'm beginning to make some (well, a little) headway on answering the original query of HB - I'm still at the pencil sketching stage; however one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Ealing - city area service offered by the Central.

OK, not all the locations would get the same level of service, but the presence of the Central might be a factor in the lower level of service eastwards from Ealing Broadway. *If* the Central was shut and there was no service (say) Ealing - Northolt then a 20 minute service on the Ealing branch would be an no-no.

I'll start browsing through the WTTs since Tower Hill opened - that might gve me a bit of inspiration beyond the common time of 42½ min Tower Hill - Wimbledon/Mansion House - Ealing.

Watch this space - but it might take a while to look beyond a 20 min Mansion House - Ealing service (ie alternate High Street/Mansion House services from Ealing Broadway - I wonder what the staffing levels would be and if the 4¼ hours would be exceeded).

Hmm. *scratches head* and thinks about balancing stand time.

i thought drivers used the C2C to Fenchurch st then walk round to Tower Hill then down to Whitechapel to change over? I know they done this a couple of years ago

That wasn't what I was trying to do actually!
I was trying to say that a mystery shopper could do well in these situations, but not in the manner that they are done at the moment (although I have to stress I have no first hand knowledge of how they are organised).

I'm aware of that limit - what I'm trying to see is if you can achieve a service without one branch suffering a 20 minute frequency - the simple tinker as you've said does not really work (or at least doesn't seem quite 'robust' enough) - I'm pretty sure I mentioned 'flaky' upthread - as you did with 'central' and I missed it.



This really leads into the joined-up-planning debate. If the work is planned (say) 18 months in advance [1] - possessions, path analysis - why can't the depots be brought into the planning - 'This depot needs to provide X more trains on weekends p,q, r, and t with Y more trains on weekend s' - I'm pretty positive that there is enough time in the process to allow the depots to give an input into this sort of thing. AIUI there is certainly the flexibility in Primavera to allow this sort of planning strategy/asset management.

[1] I'm trying to remember the quoted figure, but it is certainly enough to allow the information to be disseminated and included in the maintenance schedules.



Absolutely; the pencil sketches have only got as far as flip-flopping between HSK/Mansion House with alternate Wimbledons becoming Ealing/Mansion House. Somewhere in the vast corpus of eastern shutdown TTNs (or similar) I've seen this pattern. However the (unsurprisingly) database-of-much-confusion is living up to its title! I *think* it can be done - even without leaving Mansion House in programme only to stop trains running early and preserving the 'space' of 2½ min between successive Districts - and a bit less than that for a Circle having a trundle.



Sadly this is true - in an ideal world trains would always have the same braking rate, there would be no curves and London would be laid out in a perfect grid pattern: there *would* be a simple panacea - all is not lost, a perfect plan on paper can easily be drawn up (alluding to, but not specifically including) the Extended Circle - the answer to this (as in the eastern shutdowns) lies in the stand time of the Circle service. I don't really buy into the Circle being the bogeyman of the SSR timetabling - perhaps the gull of the SSR? Examining the structure of the Circle TT during the service strengthening and extended run-times for Notting Hill Carnival has been quite enlightening - a rare occasion when more trains than normal were booked to be working.

Part of the answer could possibly be achieved by publishing SSR lines TTs to the quarter minute [2] - it has worked wonders with stabilising the Central TTs; here, though, the devil is in the detail - commonality of stock throughout the Central, uniform braking rates, optimised signalling independent from line of sight - ah....

[2] doesn't have to be the entire line - look at the Jubilee.

I've said before that I know nothing about the rostering to the same level of detail as the TTs - I have seen the pattern of Ealing/Mansion House working before - I can't (unfortunately) remember where - it might be a published TT, it might have been a proof, this is why I'm quite interested. It may well be historical and in which case I would weight my findings to the slower, modern services.

I might find the answer one day - I've been looking at the Circle timetabling on and off for the past few years; however, this is a singular and quite utterly idiosyncratic hobby - so I'm not looking for an answer (or complete understanding) anytime soon - that would take the fun out of it!

Ealing/Mansion House seems to have been popular on Christmas Eve for some reason, I've found it in 1952, 1953 and 1959, Boxing Day 1952 and 1953; but unusually not Boxing Day 1959. As an aside it interesting to see that the pattern of working was rigidly adhered to - Christmas Day 1960 was a Sunday, so of course that meant Charing Cross reversers, no exceptions made to the working just because it was Christmas, oh no!

When the service is extended later/earlier in the day eg. Coronation 1953 or Silver Jubilee 1977 (1953 services intensified during the week before and after the Coronation day itself, positioning troops &c. 1977 saw the services just extended by an hour with no 'funnies'). Mansion House is seemingly deliberately avoided - this is curious because certainly during the morning/afternoon of the coronation the UndergrounD was used to transport vast numbers of school parties - looking at the appropriate Party Traffic Notice, my hunch was misplaced that Mansion House would have been used to get the trains back out West as soon asap - this wasn't the case in the 1937 Coronation notice, as Mansion House was used quite intensively on Coronation Day, there being an Ealing/Mansion service after the morning busy; the service was so intense that with Mansion House, Aldgate and Whitechapel full on many occasions throughout the day that Bow Road was pressed in to service for reversing. However comparing the services between the two Coronation days, it is clear that during the 1937 Coronation it was planned that the District took a fair bit more school children/parties than in 1953. 1937 was a case where Mansion House was used to get trains back out heading west as soon as they could - reversing Ealing/Northfields trains. Yup, Northfields, not even bothering to go all the way out to Hounslow - just nipping into Northfields, coupling up for full-strength working and heading back into the City as quick as possible.

Mansion House seems to have fallen out of favour after the early '60s, I've not yet looked through the WTTs - that's for another day. Moving on from the ancient and forgotten and into the era of engineering WTTs: *heaves pile of 50+ TTNs off the shelf* - I've got a biggish gap in the TTNs of the 1990s for the District, they just don't seem to be around.

The first engineering TTN of the modern era I can lay my hands on is 4/04 (Track replacement at Kings Cross and Upminster Depot) this sets the tone really, for what we've come to expect of a sparse service off Ealing just using two platforms; however 42/06 (engineering East Ham - Upminster, trackwork s. of Putney Bridge and CTRL work at KX) has an interesting service off Ealing, alternate Plaistow/Tower Hill. I suspect that this level of service was only possible due to the Wimbledon branch being shut below Putney Bridge, releasing more stock to trundle between Ealing and points East. With Baker Street shut in 26/06 - and the service 'withdrawn between HSK and ERd (due to the lack of spare platforms at Edgware Road)' the bottom half of the Circle was retimed with a 10 minute Ealing - Tower Hill service, which is as near normal as possible. 48/07 (NR engineering at Upton Park) saw a single-platform 15 min service off Ealing to Plaistow, there has been the trend as noted in the preamble to assorted TTNs with the comment that when the Richmond branch is closed, the Richmond trains will be diverted to Ealing - thereby bolstering the ex-Ealing service. This resulted in the curious situation in TTN 67/08 with only a 20 minute single-platform service off Ealing on Sat. 26/4, but with the Richmond branch closed on the Sunday 27/4 there was a three-platform service from Ealing to Tower Hill/Dagenham East (the District was cut by trackwork at Hornchurch) giving a roughly 10 minute service off Ealing, but with a strange pattern, there would be a DagE at 23½ followed by a Tower Hill at 29, another DagE at 33½ then a big gap until 43½ for another Tower Hill. With Tower Hill shut for Points/Crossing Work in 80/08 the Ealing service became a two-platform 10 minutes Ealing/HSK - with the bottom of the Circle out of commission it was only the Richmonds that ventured as far east as Embankment (176/08 with trackwork at Cannon Street was broadly similar). 133/08 (District shut E of Barking) saw a 15 minute Ealing - Barking service, which appeals to my sense of quirkiness - variable stand time all over the place too, and not with the same weighting - quite a lot of work has clearly gone into this to balance service density. Wandering almost completely off-topic (sort of) I can see the sense of running a one-platform 10 minute service out of Ealing Broadway when almost the same sort of service had to be run from Ealing Common with Hanger Lane Jn shut in 81/09 - keeps the service similar, even though the District couldn't get into one of its western termini (Ealing Broadway) or any further east than Whitechapel when coming from the west.

I must say that I'm stumped as to where I saw this Ealing/Mansion service; although it has been a fascinating (well, to me at least - apologies to the rest of you that have waded through this rather long and rambly post) trawl through the past 50 years of timetable notices - I'll have a look at the WTTs in a bit, unfortunately pre-1967 (coincident with the closing of Mark Lane) there isn't the helpful 'revisions incorporated in this timetable' clue or the summary preamble you get with the modern TTNs. Perhaps I was thinking of the Coronation or Christmas TTNs, but I could have sworn it was in modern typeface and on white (rather than old foxed cream or green paper). I shall have start digging in other libraries than my own soon! ;D

Yes, I've got a Divisional Superintendents or Line Controllers copy of WTT 91 (17/10/66) which is very heavily annotated and WTT 92 (16/10/67) which has the preamble 'Until further notice trains shown to reverse at Tower Hill will do so instead at Mansion House forming their scheduled Westbound working' - an interesting snapshot of the changes brought about by Tower Hill. Anyway - I'd better stop wittering about the historical side of things, as this is the current board!