Sites such as Realtime Trains, OpenTrainTimes (disclosure: I run OTT) use data from Network Rail systems which aren't designed to publish passenger information and may show alterations incorrectly. Use the National Rail website or another site taking information from Darwin to see passenger train information which is consistent with the departure boards at stations.
The flipside to that is that the Darwin system is also complete bobbins at times. Railboard App uses Darwin and, for example, after LNER cancelled the 17:00 from Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley (sorry Pedants) yesterday, it seemed like that combined with the ScotRail works on the lines beyond Edinburgh meant that things like the 16:30 to Glasgow Central that terminated at Edinburgh Waverley was showing in Railboard as 'On-Time' but when you clicked into it, due to the fact they had cancelled the stops beyond Waverley, it was showing as 'Cancelled' even though it wasn't as I had to catch that one home instead of the 17:00 (which LNER cancelled days in advance as they knew they wouldn't have the train crew available, but without telling anyone who had tickets booked on it - thus not enabling you to get seat reservations).
Edit - Interestingly there were \*loads\* of cancelled trains on Sunday night 16th June across the network. Which conveniently aligned with England playing football - loads of train drivers called in sick apparently.
Darwin has the capability to handle cancelled and additional intermediate stops, and to handle trains terminating before their booked destination. TRUST can't insert additional stops easily, nor can it cancel existing stops before the train has passed through.
If the capability exists but it's not being used properly for whatever reason, all bets are off.
I’ve caught a “cancelled” train, even after announcements telling us to take alternative routes
Highbury & Islington: train cancelled a few minutes before arrival
So I jumped on the previous train to Alexandra Palace to go a few stops along the same line to work out my plan B
At Allie Pallie, while working out the next move, the originally cancelled train arrived
Very bobbins indeed
As a current signaller, thank you.
I don't think you know how many signallers use OTT for a quick reference to how far away their trains currently are, it's so much easier to read at a glance instead of CCF.
Rtt has never failed me, I don't doubt it could though but it's nice to know what platform I'm at before it's officially announced since sometimes they do it quite late
i was on a train once where no one announced what the platform was at the train station, nor was it available on trainline or NR. the only reason i knew was because of RTT. it was very nice and empty for a rush hour train from a busy terminus!
Many reasons - the biggest being that the architecture I designed to cope with linking a berth-level message to a train in TRUST can't cope with some of the train describer fringes. It's not an easy fix - I'm working on an overhaul of large chunks of the site between paid work (which I need to keep the site being free) and the new way of doing things is much improved.
Why am I just finding out about OTT!!! Thanks for doing that work. I'd love to see that on a google map with all the dots :D
AND! [https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/glasgow-nw](https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/glasgow-nw)
Thank you! The maps on OTT are schematics rather than geographically accurate, but they display a lot of detail. If you want to see things at a less precise level, [signalbox.io](http://signalbox.io) has an interpolated real-time map
Ive been using OTT for a good 5 years now since my mate who has now sadly passed recommended it to me. Saved me alot of ball ache at london vic, bristol temple meads etc countless times😁
I feel it's right 90% of the time - I use RTT to go to the platform early and if the alterations changes are wrong, oh well I'll then go to the righ place at the same time as everyone else.
Ok here’s a big one, for underground users
When it says “Kennington, 5 mins” the 5 mins is a measurement of distance not time.
The train is 5 minutes away, and if there is a distraction, it will remain 5 minutes away for however long it takes to fix the problem.
That’s why you can be standing on a platform for 20 minutes of no trains during a signal failure and the Display board cheerily tells you there is a circle line in 5 minutes.
A more accurate way of saying it instead of being 5 minutes away, would be to say it’s between 2 and 3 stops away. But that would confuse people so they stick to minutes
No the bus tracking is just pure fiction.
In some cities anyway.
At least one I'm almost certain it's displaying the timetabled ETA. Or it takes note of the bus location only at limited stops that are often FAR AWAY making it totally fictional.
There's no other reason for buses to be "1min" away but you can't see them on a long long main street with traffic lights, or for them to disappear off the board after saying less than 5 minutes for 10 minutes, deapite no bus having passed.
Surely it's just "time to do the distance" in ideal conditions. Like all "sat nav" software? It'd be pointless to show it in meters. As we don't know how fast a train travels per meter. So, it has to be time take to travel the distance. ( in ideal circumstances )
Yes in ideal circumstances the time and distance pair up. For anyone that uses the underground frequently knows that there often isn’t ideal circumstances.
And a common question is “why does it say there’s a circle line in 5 minutes but it hasn’t changed for the last 10 minutes”. Now you know. The train is 5 minutes away, but it isn’t moving. Hence it’s a measurement of distance over time.
In terms of the technology used, the tracks have a device on them that pairs with a similar device on the train. When the train goes over that section of track, the station computer knows that that train is in a certain place and it knows how long it should take the train to arrive under ideal circumstances. That’s where it gets its estimated time. But as I’ve stated, that estimate is based on the train moving at normal speed.
If it is going slower, or has stopped completely it’s not accurate
That’s why the time boards in reality are a measurement of distance, not time
Conductors wish that you weren't there.
I remember one new starter, a rather naïve lad, who came into L\*\*ds mess room, dropped his bags, sat down and, with his head in his hands, said "They're all just cunts". Welcome, Brother. One of us.
I was in filthy L\*\*ds on P2 getting ready to go to Bradford Forster Square. There was a bloke looking at the departure board on the platform, the station auto announcer said something like "The 1510 train to Bradford Forster Square on platform 2 will call at Shipley, Frizinghall and Bradford Forster Square." He got on the train. Then I did my statutory announcements and safety stuff. Then the train auto announcer said where we were going, which stops and when and where we would terminate. I came out of the cab to sort the despatch and doors when your man says "Is this train going to Bradford?"
"All the evidence would suggest so" I said while pointing my face at the destination indicators on the train, of which there were ten.
He got the right hump and got a bit sweary. For all I know he's still there where I left him.
Not too far from me, Leeds Castle.
For future reference: its the Transpennine to York || the LNER to King's Cross || Transition on foot into St. Pancras || Hop on the Southeastern to Ramsgate, alighting at Chatham || Scootch down round the corner into the bus station to catch the 101 to The Cannon (Stop T), in Maidstone || then it's the 10X, getting off at the Great Danes Hotel stop || and finally, just a short 20min walk up the country lane.
Easy really! Just a quick 7hr trip 😉
You could even recommend they break up the travel by jumping of a stop before Chatham, at Rochester, to take in our castle and Cathedral 😅
I think we are a vastly underrated city (and I don't care what anybody says, we are a city 😅). Well, perhaps less underrated and more unheard of. And yet we have more than our fair share of history and heritage to offer.
I live in Strood but grew up all over with close family in Chatham and Gillingham, often traveling through Rochester in-between.
My favourite was a Japanese family travelling to Liverpool St underground station. They jumped on my Liverpool Lime St bound service and only piped up once we had left MKC.
Oh I've just remembered this bloke, from Africa I think. Anyway, he got on my train in Lancaster going down to Leeds. His ticket was for Preston, completely the wrong direction, so I explained that he needed to get off at the next stop, go back to Lancaster and crack on from there. He was insistent that we were going to Preston. We were going through Long Preston, a place with about ten houses in North Yorkshire. We got to Carnforth and again I tried to get him to leave. Luckily we had a few minutes slack at that station so I thought I'd have enough time but no, every time I said Long Preston he just smiled and said "Yes, Preston." So I thought, fuck him. I'm bored now. We eventually got to Long Preston and he did indeed get off. Pitch black, not much more than a farm track to the only street through the village and he just stood there looking bemused.
Turning up the air conditioning makes drunk customers more likely to fall asleep. Useful on football trains.
When the Guard / Conductor comes through the last train of the night asking where you're travelling to, it's because he / she and the driver are hoping you'll all be off before the final stop. This saves an ECS (empty coaching stock) at the terminating station and may mean the train can go straight to depot. This lets the guard / driver finish early.
Interesting, I've got two questions regarding this. If, let's say, all customers on board were alighting prior to the final calling point, are you suggesting the train would then only serve stations as far as the last customer was alighting before running light to depot?
1) What if there are people waiting to board at stations between where the last person on board is alighting and the final terminus?
2) Wouldn't terminating early to run back to depot/stabling point effectively mean any part of the route missed would be classed as a cancellation and thus lost mileage?
I know it's not the same, but I work on the buses, and we can't miss out any part of a route even if the bus is empty for these exact reasons. Someone might be waiting further down the route, and missing out part of a route is registered as lost mileage (which in the case of council-subsidised routes, can mean being fined).
With swr at least I know some of their last trains of the night have the stops listed as "drop off only", so if there's no pax then they can skip the stops.
Not OP but I'm assuming it's something similar to:
A - start of the route.
B - where the last person is alighting.
C - the second to last stop of the journey (now an empty train).
D - the last stop, but as the train is empty they can bypass this and go straight to the depot because there is no one to get off, and no one will get on a train at its terminal.
E - the depot.
This is what I was thinking, but I'd already written out too long of a comment and also couldn't think of how to explain it. Props for explaining it very eloquently.
If the depot ('E') is past the terminus ('D') such that the train has to continue through D to reach E, then I can see no issues in terms of lost mileage or the system logging a station as not being served. If however, the train gets to 'C', and then with no one left onboard, turns around towards the depot missing terminus 'D' out entirely, surely this is still lost mileage, unless of course it is simply a set-down stop.
I'm finding this all very genuinely interesting.
The train would continue to call at all booked stops. The time saving is mainly not having to carry out the ECS check before the train is stabled. If a train arrives at its terminating station empty it may then go straight into it's stabling location without stopping at this station as no-one would be boarding here. This does depend on all sorts of factors, though.
A genuine thank you for replying and explaining this, it's really interesting to gain an insight into this kind of stuff. I'm all for making life easier and quicker towards the end of the night, so totally get all this!
Your driver knows every route they cover inside out to the point that they could probably drive their 400 ton train that takes a mile to stop blind.
If you commit ticket fraud, investigators can force retailers to turn over your booking records to use as evidence in court.
You’ve probably felt the emergency brakes apply a couple of times without realising it - it’s firm but far gentler than other forms of transport. You don’t get thrown about like in the movies.
When it comes to making decisions about which trains to cancel, delay, or miss stops, controllers don’t consider the cost to the company through refunds. Their focus is maintaining the service.
There’s no financial or statistical benefit for a train company to skip stops on a service.
The British Transport Police is wholly funded by the rail industry but the UK government can instruct them to police other areas.
A police officer on the Royal Train once accidentally discharged their firearm in the staff coach, it hit a table. (This isn’t a secret, it was covered in the media).
Again, not a secret, drug and alcohol use is taken very seriously. Staff in safety related roles are be tested randomly as well as after being involved in an incident. Some companies make it part of their policy that staff up to and including the managing director can also be tested randomly.
I've definitely felt the emergency brakes on a train and noticed it- a class 450 running at linespeed somewhere near Wimbledon when there were trespassers on the line. I remember being surprised by how hard the braking was (and the toilet seat falling to the closed position), followed by a thought of what have we just hit. The driver (or guard?) announced the situation fairly soon after stopping and it made sense why we had braked so hard.
We then sat on the train stationary for a while, presumably while the BTP turned up and did their stuff, before we continued.
I’ve had a couple on its cousin, the class 350 when I was a caterer. We were doing 100mph and the train was completely full with people standing. We stopped very quickly. Someone pulled the alarm by accident. The woman who did it blamed her toddler, who was a good metre too short to reach it.
This was a fair few years back (pre COVID) so I don't remember much. I do remember we made it to our destination at Exeter though. I think the train had barely started moving so there wasn't much disruption to everyone else at Birmingham.
I do remember it being quite a busy train (I mean you could probably have guessed that as it was an XC train leaving new street), and the guard had to push his way through to try and find the leaver that got pulled. I suspect without good CCTV footage they got away with it, though I have no idea what so ever.
I once pulled the emergency pascom handle on an Irish Rail DMU.
There was a steam pipe which had ruptured and was sending dirty air through the HVAC into the carriage. Everyone thought it was smoke. Someone stood up and started to break the glass to open the doors while the train was at line speed. Horrified, I pulled the pascom. Immediately, there was a rush of air from the handle, towards my hand. The noise of the engine stopped immediately and the train slowed down, but not drastically so.
Good work! It might have been that the alarm handle on those trains only applies the brake a bit, which alerts the driver but ultimately gives them time to find a safe place to stop.
Nowadays there’s an override that can be used to ensure you don’t stop in an unsuitable location, like a bridge or tunnel.
I was recently on a train in the Highlands, going from Mallaig to Glasgow Queen Street with my dad, a friend, and my stepmum. I don't remember the train type (my dad is a driver, so would know though lol) and the driver had to emergency stop because something ran onto the tracks ahead. It was quite sharp and we stopped with a jolt. We weren't going very fast anyway because we'd just left a station a few minutes before, and the line speed there is not super fast. Dad immediately pulled a face and went,' That was a hard emergency brake', and then the driver came on the tannoy to apologise. However, I've been on a thameslink going from Luton to Brighton, and the driver braked hard because of trespassers on the line. That was also a sharp stop but not as dramatic as one would expect. Kudos to the driver for reacting quickly enough to stop. I get so mad at people that trespass because I know what it did to my dad when he hit someone going through a station he wasn't stopping at. Didn't kill the person that had been messing around too close to the edge but took their arm clean off. Really shook him. He's been a driver for 40 years nearly and so far hasn't hit anyone else. He's had colleagues it's happened to who couldn't get back in the cab again afterwards.
I remember this incident vividly. Absolute chaos getting home from wimbledon that day! Had to change three times to get home down the swr line :(. Stupid trespassers.
It’s the same everywhere. My employer’s booklet on the policy is the sternest-worded thing I’ve ever read. They will not tolerate any amount of alcohol in your body.
Everyone has a small amount of alcohol in their body as part of digestion - even teetotallers. It is a very small amount, but it is detectable. They can't have a zero limit or everyone would get sacked, so there must be a limit.
There’s also at least one very rare medical condition where you produce more ethanol than usual during digestion
[Sky News Link](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/belgian-brewer-whose-body-produces-its-own-alcohol-cleared-of-drink-driving-13121342)
I've been on at least one Electrostar with a TPWS fault before - emergency brake feels very similar to a normal brake application until you actually stop, then the jolt hits and you know something is up.
I've had better days. I was fortunate that the carriage I was in was one of only 3 or 4 that remained upright on the rails. The impact was huge though.
This is one thing that sucked about working in Northern Rail offices. No lunchtime beers as we had to follow the same rules as the drivers.
Also, I’ve definitely felt the emergency breaks before. They were applied whilst going very fast on an Avanti West Coast train, causing me to get yoghurt all over my trousers. Why don’t they make the tables more grippy? 😂
There was a big fuss over the Post Ofice Horizon scandal that Post Office have the ability to pursue criminal prosecutions without police / CPS involvement.
Everyone was horrified and asked how this could happen.
Nobody has yet pointed out that train operating companies have the same power.
As a driver, we are usually the last ones to know what is happening if there are delays. Passengers are more likely to find out the reason via social media before we do. If there's delays and held at a red, I'll send a preset message to the signaller that says "Standing at signal". If the signaller is busy dealing with something, I'll just get a text back that says "wait". That is it. As we're not allowed to have phones on or devices, we can't find out any other way. If it's taking a while, I can call our control to tell me, but pretty much just have to wait. If the signaller is kind, they'll call me up and let me know - doesn't always happen though!
"Delays due to wrong type of snow or rain" is a real thing. Not used as much though these days but really light snowflakes or a light drizzle or will just sit on the railhead and mix with contaminates, this can cause extreme low adhesion and is not nice to experience. Seeing your speedometer go to 0 whilst you've got the brakes in full and you know you're at least 60mph is butt-clenching. Give me heavy rain any day!
Our route knowledge is beyond just "follow the signals". We know every curve, every gradient, every station, every footbridge, every access point, every signal, every junction on our routes. We have to in order that we can think far ahead of where we are and where we want to be in terms of speed/braking at a certain point. I still travel near linespeed during thick fog, as we can tell where we are by the side to side movement and bumps in the track.
There are lots of safety systems in place, for example one system is called the Vigilance/DSD. A driver has to keep a pedal depressed with their feet at all times in order to move the train. However, after a certain period, if the train has detected no input from the driver an alarm will sound. The driver then has to lift the pedal and depress it again. If the driver doesn't do this within a certain amount of time, the emergency brakes will apply. If there still isn't any input from the driver the train will send a message to the signaller informing them of this. The signaller can then call the train and make a PA announcement.
Is it true that leaves on the line is a thing since the end of steam? I once read that they used to have to cut trees back to avoid lineside fires, but now diesel/electric don't set things on fire it's not worth doing
It sure is a thing still. Leaf fall season is also a major issue for low adhesion, but there are a lot more things to mitigate against them these days. During Autumn/Winter Network Rail run Rail Head Treatment Trains around the network. These are the strange little trains with water tanks that spray high pressure jets on to the rails, which cleans the rail head of leaf mulch and other contaminants.
IIRC leaves on the line are an issue for two reasons. Firstly, they quickly turn into a slippery sludge,in the same way they can on a well troden path, which means breaking action is reduced. The second is they get whipped up into the breaks as trains pass, dry out due to the heat produced by the breaks, and then catch fire.
Trees are still cut back for a number of reasons. While steam trains would throw sparks more often than diesels, diesels still can. Look for a video of a train with oil in the turbo. Trees are also cut back around overhead wires for the same reason they are cut back around the national grid. Branches falling onto the wires can cause damage and short circuits. 25kV going through a branch will quickly cause a fire or any water in the wood to flash into steam and the branch to explode.
Really since disc brakes. Older stock used wheel tread brakes (and some locomotives had an "anti slip brake" button which would just rub the brake shoes on the wheels for the purpose of removing contamination) and these tread brakes would scrape any contaminants off the wheel. Once trains started going to disc brakes, which in normal conditions are much more effective (as well as not making an ungodly racket in the passenger coaches), this stopped happening so wheel contamination is more likely. Network Rail run RHTT (railhead treatment trains) during leaf fall season to try to prevent poor adhesion.
A large amount of the railway, including passenger and freight services, operations and engineering, is run on good will and favours between staff. It's why work to rule and overtime bans have such a huge impact.
So true.
And when a train is cancelled (and no strikes that day)
due to “staff shortages”the real reason is mismanagement.
I’ve been waiting with full crew to take a train, and an announcement comes over the tannoy to say xxx is cancelled due to “staff shortages”
We all look at each other, and go … huh? We are here?
Turns out it was the set that was faulty.
But they couldn’t wait to try blame us and try get the public angry because - that’s what they want.
When it was their lack of maintenance and scheduling that was the reason.
Only way that it could be proven would be if someone leaked the crew plan,
with confirmation from resources saying they were all in work and where they were supposed to be.
Along with the train maintenance records and control messages to confirm the real reason for cancellation.
So without breaching gdpr, nope!
As a side point for leakers out there;
GDPR only covers personal data, anything not personal data isn't protected by it. It also doesn't override any right to whistleblow, say for example making someone such as a union or press aware that TOCs are blaming staff for their own mistakes though it is good practice to black out identifying data such as names of course.
I've seen this happen. Was in Brighton several years ago waiting for a Southampton Central train and got chatting to a guard who knew my dad as he was a driver for Brighton for many years and seems to know everyone on the trains lol. The announcement came on to say the train was cancelled due to staff shortage and she looked at me and said 'that's not true we're all here,' we talked about how shit the situation had gotten as this was when trains were being cancelled practically every single day for stupid reasons. Ended up getting home 2 hours later than I would have. Didn't blame the crew, from talking to my dad and his colleagues I knew the reason was bad management and told everyone I could about what was really happening.
Literally the opposite of what I do at work.
If anything goes wrong, if not our staff. I’ll never blame them. Always the office.
I’ll take the hit, don’t be aggressive to the public facing staff.
I don’t work in trains though lol
Yep, when I first started 12 years ago, I was told the railway runs on overtime, and it's absolutely true. I remember, I think it was last year, one passenger company was offering hundreds of pounds just to work an overtime shift. That was just 1 payment to work a shift that didn't include the hourly wage. The company I work for has done something similar in the past, but nowhere near to the same amount. They still might do, to be honest, but I only do overtime shifts as a favour to my managers cos they are decent lads who have helped me a lot.
That’s interesting. Makes me wonder how the culture of the company must be so important. From what I heard, Virgin had a great culture compared to Avanti, so I’m guessing that has a major impact on Avanti’s performance if staff feel like they have no loyalty to Avanti or feel mistreated etc. basically important to be a good place to work and treat people well.
It's incredibly important, and part of the reason why industrial relations are so complex and variable across the industry. Every company is different, and every region within that company may be different. A poorly resourced company with excellent relations may run a great service as staff will go above and beyond. A better resourced company with poor relations may run a poor service, as nobody will want to do anything extra for them.
Interestingly, I have also heard similar things about the move from Virgin to Avanti. A family friend of mine worked for VT (WCML) and absolutely loved it, they said there was a real spark to the company, which was utterly lost with the changeover to Avanti. They maintain it was the best company they've ever worked for.
People often complain about freight services getting in the way - they are often regulated to give passengers a better service.
But in some cases, there is more value to the freight train than there is for a passenger service with 2 people on board.
Whenever you hear ‘Emergency services dealing with an incident’, we all rally around our colleagues to ensure they’ll get the support they need.
There are more Class 37 cranks in the industry than you think there is.
Yeah, I'd imagine that late night passenger services are pretty unimportant in comparison to the freight (whose cargo is still just as valuable at night as in the day), so I wouldn't be shocked if the priorities flipped on their head at times
I'm an ex head office worker for a TOC and I used to sit next to the ticketing guys.
My favourite secret (lesser known fact) is the station "London International".
Bought a few tickets to London International (coupled with Eurostar) and I've had RPOs trying to claim I had fake tickets.
Very few staff (let alone customers) know about it which is sad.
Avanti don't sell these tickets, I don't believe any online retailer does. You have to go to the station and tell them the station code is LNE.
You are supposed to have a Eurostar ticket to use them.
Much more flexible and with better protections than a regular ticket
A lot of people are scared to be witnesses for valid reasons, and besides, there is CCTV on every inch of the train, so what do you actually mean by 'isn’t resolvable'? the reporter will get in trouble?
There’s no investigation that comes out of someone saying ‘acting suspiciously’ over a text and not answering the phone when called back, unless it’s developed upon further over text. A lot of trains still do not have CCTV and even the Azumas quite often have cctv faults
It’s like texting them saying there’s 600 devices on a train heading in your direction. One of them isn’t working. You have 2 minutes to figure out which one, this message will self destruct.
As a train technician, we know that we would never touch the windows, floor or toilet disabled handle bar. Trains are the pit of bad hygiene and some of the sights we see on the after service really are the stories of horror.
We never tell you what's really going on. A fire alarm is 'Inspector Sands', or sometimes just 'an alarm' (omitting the fire). A 'passenger incident' is vague enough to mean anything and is an excuse for everything and there are codes for every kind of spillage. If you're being a nuisance we might fake phone BTP to get you to leave.
Aha! I was at Kings Cross last week when there was an announcement that the fire alarm was about to be tested. There was then a series of a fairly low-key long tone, interspersed with "Inspector Sands to the main concourse". I was wondering who this guy was, now I know.
Inspector sands allows staff to investigate without causing panic. If no staff checks the problem and says it's OK within a certain time frame, the real fire alarm will go off and the station will be evacuated.
I'd imagine BTP sergeants called Sands are barred from promotion to inspector for that reason! Sucks for them, but it would just be too confusing for everyone.
I stayed near Waterloo last week in a hotel with an actual opening window. I was woken at 4am by a repeating message asking 'inspector sands' to go somewhere. In the morning, I thought it was a dream! Thank you very much for explaining!
A loot of the maintenance and diagnostic tools hail from the late 80's. I know of at least one diagnostic software that we are still required to use whose install instructions start with "Insert install floppy in drive A:"
If it's legacy code it might not have been called drive A, but some mainframes required a floppy to start up. Indeed, that's what the floppy drive was invented for - holding the IPL code for an IBM mainframe so you didn't have to toggle it in by hand.
Use fasteroute for updates, it's synced to the board and will know before the driver does if the service is being cancelled.
Traksy is also handy for seeing a live map, it helps visualise the railways and the way signallers see em.
Same on flights where cabin crew/pilots are sometimes the last to know.
Got delayed then cancelled on easyJet last year and control updated the app before the staff - they were asking us for information and said that happens all the time!
Train toilets these days are pretty much all vacuum toilets, like on aircraft and ships. If you’re sat on it when it flushes, it may try to pull you in - although the seat is designed to that air flows under it, so someone’s bum can’t make a seal over it.
If they become blocked, you can do a “service flush” (vacuum but no water) to try and clear it. You can also do a reverse flush, where the vacuum is reversed to try and clear the obstruction. If you repeat this, it usually adds more air pressure each time.
By this point, you’re playing Russian roulette. Eventually (or rather quickly), the obstruction will become dislodged at velocity, usually becoming liquidised in the process.
The person I saw do this had the good sense to put the lid down and stand on it, but it still looked like the toilet was vomiting.
The lid is supposed to be clamped down for a reverse flush. The HazID for the IEP trains identified an incident where a member of maintenance staff attempted to self resolve a blockage whilst a train was in service. Quite a surprising amount of damage to the panelling considering the payload was a liquid.
that on the underground they make you walk the long way to stop congestion and over grounding also there is a secret overground station called Battersea park which isn't on any map.
So this is from 2007-10 when I worked in ticketing in east Anglia : tickets booked over the phone were posted by untracked mail. So you could just call , say the tickets never came, and 100% of the time get a free extra ticket. Similarly, if you wanted to change an advance ticket : you could just call and say you were sold the wrong date / time. It was never checked, we just reissued a new ticket. I don't think phone sales even exist now, so consider this useless info.
Small trick I personally use thanks to rail experience. When I travel from stations which don't display platform until just before departure despite the stock for it sitting there (like kgx), I will use tiger worldline global staff view to get headcode, then use opentraintimes map to get platform of that headcode. This means I always get first dibs on seats, while joe public is still waiting beyond gateline staring at the cis boards.
As a retired driver I still use RTT when traveling or meeting someone. When I was working it was often more useful and informative than our own control 🤣
This is a relatively minor thing but those little stores you find at stations? The guards actually give a shit.
When I was a student I worked at one part time. A guy came in and stole a muffin (yes, really). I knew what was going on and as I chased him down the street I asked the guard to watch the till for me. He knew what to do.
Eventually I caught up with the guy who simply put the muffin on the floor and said "fine, you have it".
Which I did.
I happily ate it on the way back to the station. When I got there I asked the guard if everything was ok. He said that a guy came in after I left, tried to get behind the counter and saw him sat there, did a 180 and left.
It all got reported to the police.
Nice muffin.
Unless there’s a whole hidden area of functionality to the DB Navigator app that I’ve never discovered (despite being a massive train nerd and having spent lots of time travelling on trains in Germany), I think you’ve got the wrong subreddit :) This is r/UKtrains, not German trains :)
Hence the word “advance”. Granted, the advance ticket system is flawed and doesn’t compensate for delayed trains, which is where discretion comes into play, but if you’re trying to get an advance single onboard a service, the ticket machines cannot issues those tickets. Most TOCs also have a “Buy Before You Board” Policy (Condition 6 NRCOT) therefore can only charge you an anytime ticket onboard unless there were mitigating circumstances.
TL;DR: Ticketing is broken
If you use opentraintimes.com you will usually see cancellations and delays before they go onto the information screens or announcements.
On thameslink trains the back first class carriage is always open for any ticket to use.
https://x.com/mrtimdunn/status/1728478311876071563?s=46&t=WaTP0L6RgClbEfun4oj6XQ
If anyone's got any cool anecdotes about the underground infrastructure and tunnels under train/tube stations please drop it 💪 I find that shit really interesting
Sites such as Realtime Trains, OpenTrainTimes (disclosure: I run OTT) use data from Network Rail systems which aren't designed to publish passenger information and may show alterations incorrectly. Use the National Rail website or another site taking information from Darwin to see passenger train information which is consistent with the departure boards at stations.
The flipside to that is that the Darwin system is also complete bobbins at times. Railboard App uses Darwin and, for example, after LNER cancelled the 17:00 from Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley (sorry Pedants) yesterday, it seemed like that combined with the ScotRail works on the lines beyond Edinburgh meant that things like the 16:30 to Glasgow Central that terminated at Edinburgh Waverley was showing in Railboard as 'On-Time' but when you clicked into it, due to the fact they had cancelled the stops beyond Waverley, it was showing as 'Cancelled' even though it wasn't as I had to catch that one home instead of the 17:00 (which LNER cancelled days in advance as they knew they wouldn't have the train crew available, but without telling anyone who had tickets booked on it - thus not enabling you to get seat reservations). Edit - Interestingly there were \*loads\* of cancelled trains on Sunday night 16th June across the network. Which conveniently aligned with England playing football - loads of train drivers called in sick apparently.
Nice use of "bobbins". Not heard that in a while
I also appreciated that
Ha, me too. Stopped at that word and scrolled down to be pleasantly surprised it had been picked up.
Darwin has the capability to handle cancelled and additional intermediate stops, and to handle trains terminating before their booked destination. TRUST can't insert additional stops easily, nor can it cancel existing stops before the train has passed through. If the capability exists but it's not being used properly for whatever reason, all bets are off.
I’ve caught a “cancelled” train, even after announcements telling us to take alternative routes Highbury & Islington: train cancelled a few minutes before arrival So I jumped on the previous train to Alexandra Palace to go a few stops along the same line to work out my plan B At Allie Pallie, while working out the next move, the originally cancelled train arrived Very bobbins indeed
Where is EDI?
Edinburgh Turnhouse airport. Comment meant Waverley.
As a current signaller, thank you. I don't think you know how many signallers use OTT for a quick reference to how far away their trains currently are, it's so much easier to read at a glance instead of CCF.
Also a signaller (but not CCF), can second this. TRUST is a buggy mess.
I use a combination of RTT and OTT maps to monitor my inbound engineering traffic while in the field. So user friendly on a mobile device.
Rtt has never failed me, I don't doubt it could though but it's nice to know what platform I'm at before it's officially announced since sometimes they do it quite late
You can always tell the RTT users. At Euston it’s the difference between a seat and hell.
i was on a train once where no one announced what the platform was at the train station, nor was it available on trainline or NR. the only reason i knew was because of RTT. it was very nice and empty for a rush hour train from a busy terminus!
Just a message to thank you for your great work on OTT. Used comprehensively during times of disruption within the TOC that I work for.
As a passenger, I found OTT after a guard recommended it. I particularly like the maps feature. Keep up the good work
OTT is awesome, keep it up!
Why are not all the headcodes clickable in OTT? Not even weird moves, just normal commuter services sometimes
Many reasons - the biggest being that the architecture I designed to cope with linking a berth-level message to a train in TRUST can't cope with some of the train describer fringes. It's not an easy fix - I'm working on an overhaul of large chunks of the site between paid work (which I need to keep the site being free) and the new way of doing things is much improved.
Why am I just finding out about OTT!!! Thanks for doing that work. I'd love to see that on a google map with all the dots :D AND! [https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/glasgow-nw](https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/glasgow-nw)
Thank you! The maps on OTT are schematics rather than geographically accurate, but they display a lot of detail. If you want to see things at a less precise level, [signalbox.io](http://signalbox.io) has an interpolated real-time map
Hi mate driver here and another thumbs up for ott. Really helpful but of kit
Ive been using OTT for a good 5 years now since my mate who has now sadly passed recommended it to me. Saved me alot of ball ache at london vic, bristol temple meads etc countless times😁
Good for you!! When I worked on the mainline I used your site to find my trains as it was easier than calling the control room.
This is a hero walking amongst us. I love you.
Hey poggs... Glad to see you're still pushing on with OTT. Rockshore :)
Oh crikey, that was years ago. I'm flying solo now!
I feel it's right 90% of the time - I use RTT to go to the platform early and if the alterations changes are wrong, oh well I'll then go to the righ place at the same time as everyone else.
Ok here’s a big one, for underground users When it says “Kennington, 5 mins” the 5 mins is a measurement of distance not time. The train is 5 minutes away, and if there is a distraction, it will remain 5 minutes away for however long it takes to fix the problem. That’s why you can be standing on a platform for 20 minutes of no trains during a signal failure and the Display board cheerily tells you there is a circle line in 5 minutes. A more accurate way of saying it instead of being 5 minutes away, would be to say it’s between 2 and 3 stops away. But that would confuse people so they stick to minutes
I have always assumed this was true. Same for the bus tracking.
No the bus tracking is just pure fiction. In some cities anyway. At least one I'm almost certain it's displaying the timetabled ETA. Or it takes note of the bus location only at limited stops that are often FAR AWAY making it totally fictional. There's no other reason for buses to be "1min" away but you can't see them on a long long main street with traffic lights, or for them to disappear off the board after saying less than 5 minutes for 10 minutes, deapite no bus having passed.
You're not from Bristol are you? Because that sounds like every single bus in Bristol ever 😝
Aberdeen was shite when I lived there. Unless it was the 1 or the 2, bus timetables were just complete works of fiction.
Surely it's just "time to do the distance" in ideal conditions. Like all "sat nav" software? It'd be pointless to show it in meters. As we don't know how fast a train travels per meter. So, it has to be time take to travel the distance. ( in ideal circumstances )
Yes in ideal circumstances the time and distance pair up. For anyone that uses the underground frequently knows that there often isn’t ideal circumstances. And a common question is “why does it say there’s a circle line in 5 minutes but it hasn’t changed for the last 10 minutes”. Now you know. The train is 5 minutes away, but it isn’t moving. Hence it’s a measurement of distance over time. In terms of the technology used, the tracks have a device on them that pairs with a similar device on the train. When the train goes over that section of track, the station computer knows that that train is in a certain place and it knows how long it should take the train to arrive under ideal circumstances. That’s where it gets its estimated time. But as I’ve stated, that estimate is based on the train moving at normal speed. If it is going slower, or has stopped completely it’s not accurate That’s why the time boards in reality are a measurement of distance, not time
This has explained so much! Thank you!
Conductors wish that you weren't there. I remember one new starter, a rather naïve lad, who came into L\*\*ds mess room, dropped his bags, sat down and, with his head in his hands, said "They're all just cunts". Welcome, Brother. One of us.
That’s because as soon as people walk into a station their brains turn to mush and they cease to be able to read or understand basic instructions
I was in filthy L\*\*ds on P2 getting ready to go to Bradford Forster Square. There was a bloke looking at the departure board on the platform, the station auto announcer said something like "The 1510 train to Bradford Forster Square on platform 2 will call at Shipley, Frizinghall and Bradford Forster Square." He got on the train. Then I did my statutory announcements and safety stuff. Then the train auto announcer said where we were going, which stops and when and where we would terminate. I came out of the cab to sort the despatch and doors when your man says "Is this train going to Bradford?" "All the evidence would suggest so" I said while pointing my face at the destination indicators on the train, of which there were ten. He got the right hump and got a bit sweary. For all I know he's still there where I left him.
Why do you keep censoring L**ds? What is it? Is it the rail version of saying Macbeth in a theatre or something?
We do not mention The Dark Place
‘Where’s the Bradford train’ is pretty much 90% of the questions asked on the platforms at Leeds
I think my favourite was these Japanese women who asked for directions to Leeds Castle. For those that don't know, it's in Kent.
Not too far from me, Leeds Castle. For future reference: its the Transpennine to York || the LNER to King's Cross || Transition on foot into St. Pancras || Hop on the Southeastern to Ramsgate, alighting at Chatham || Scootch down round the corner into the bus station to catch the 101 to The Cannon (Stop T), in Maidstone || then it's the 10X, getting off at the Great Danes Hotel stop || and finally, just a short 20min walk up the country lane. Easy really! Just a quick 7hr trip 😉 You could even recommend they break up the travel by jumping of a stop before Chatham, at Rochester, to take in our castle and Cathedral 😅
Aaah a fellow medway enjoyer I see!
I think we are a vastly underrated city (and I don't care what anybody says, we are a city 😅). Well, perhaps less underrated and more unheard of. And yet we have more than our fair share of history and heritage to offer. I live in Strood but grew up all over with close family in Chatham and Gillingham, often traveling through Rochester in-between.
My favourite was a Japanese family travelling to Liverpool St underground station. They jumped on my Liverpool Lime St bound service and only piped up once we had left MKC.
Oh I've just remembered this bloke, from Africa I think. Anyway, he got on my train in Lancaster going down to Leeds. His ticket was for Preston, completely the wrong direction, so I explained that he needed to get off at the next stop, go back to Lancaster and crack on from there. He was insistent that we were going to Preston. We were going through Long Preston, a place with about ten houses in North Yorkshire. We got to Carnforth and again I tried to get him to leave. Luckily we had a few minutes slack at that station so I thought I'd have enough time but no, every time I said Long Preston he just smiled and said "Yes, Preston." So I thought, fuck him. I'm bored now. We eventually got to Long Preston and he did indeed get off. Pitch black, not much more than a farm track to the only street through the village and he just stood there looking bemused.
That's the point everyone realises they are no longer the newbie
I don't think that's a secret...
Turning up the air conditioning makes drunk customers more likely to fall asleep. Useful on football trains. When the Guard / Conductor comes through the last train of the night asking where you're travelling to, it's because he / she and the driver are hoping you'll all be off before the final stop. This saves an ECS (empty coaching stock) at the terminating station and may mean the train can go straight to depot. This lets the guard / driver finish early.
It's a fact that we fall asleep in cooler temperatures quicker.
It's warm temps that put me to sleep.
Interesting, I've got two questions regarding this. If, let's say, all customers on board were alighting prior to the final calling point, are you suggesting the train would then only serve stations as far as the last customer was alighting before running light to depot? 1) What if there are people waiting to board at stations between where the last person on board is alighting and the final terminus? 2) Wouldn't terminating early to run back to depot/stabling point effectively mean any part of the route missed would be classed as a cancellation and thus lost mileage? I know it's not the same, but I work on the buses, and we can't miss out any part of a route even if the bus is empty for these exact reasons. Someone might be waiting further down the route, and missing out part of a route is registered as lost mileage (which in the case of council-subsidised routes, can mean being fined).
With swr at least I know some of their last trains of the night have the stops listed as "drop off only", so if there's no pax then they can skip the stops.
We can't skip the stops but we can depart early.
Genuinely didn't think of this, probably because I don't think it's something I've personally come across before. Thank you for mentioning it!
Not OP but I'm assuming it's something similar to: A - start of the route. B - where the last person is alighting. C - the second to last stop of the journey (now an empty train). D - the last stop, but as the train is empty they can bypass this and go straight to the depot because there is no one to get off, and no one will get on a train at its terminal. E - the depot.
This is what I was thinking, but I'd already written out too long of a comment and also couldn't think of how to explain it. Props for explaining it very eloquently. If the depot ('E') is past the terminus ('D') such that the train has to continue through D to reach E, then I can see no issues in terms of lost mileage or the system logging a station as not being served. If however, the train gets to 'C', and then with no one left onboard, turns around towards the depot missing terminus 'D' out entirely, surely this is still lost mileage, unless of course it is simply a set-down stop. I'm finding this all very genuinely interesting.
The train would continue to call at all booked stops. The time saving is mainly not having to carry out the ECS check before the train is stabled. If a train arrives at its terminating station empty it may then go straight into it's stabling location without stopping at this station as no-one would be boarding here. This does depend on all sorts of factors, though.
A genuine thank you for replying and explaining this, it's really interesting to gain an insight into this kind of stuff. I'm all for making life easier and quicker towards the end of the night, so totally get all this!
Your driver knows every route they cover inside out to the point that they could probably drive their 400 ton train that takes a mile to stop blind. If you commit ticket fraud, investigators can force retailers to turn over your booking records to use as evidence in court. You’ve probably felt the emergency brakes apply a couple of times without realising it - it’s firm but far gentler than other forms of transport. You don’t get thrown about like in the movies. When it comes to making decisions about which trains to cancel, delay, or miss stops, controllers don’t consider the cost to the company through refunds. Their focus is maintaining the service. There’s no financial or statistical benefit for a train company to skip stops on a service. The British Transport Police is wholly funded by the rail industry but the UK government can instruct them to police other areas. A police officer on the Royal Train once accidentally discharged their firearm in the staff coach, it hit a table. (This isn’t a secret, it was covered in the media). Again, not a secret, drug and alcohol use is taken very seriously. Staff in safety related roles are be tested randomly as well as after being involved in an incident. Some companies make it part of their policy that staff up to and including the managing director can also be tested randomly.
I've definitely felt the emergency brakes on a train and noticed it- a class 450 running at linespeed somewhere near Wimbledon when there were trespassers on the line. I remember being surprised by how hard the braking was (and the toilet seat falling to the closed position), followed by a thought of what have we just hit. The driver (or guard?) announced the situation fairly soon after stopping and it made sense why we had braked so hard. We then sat on the train stationary for a while, presumably while the BTP turned up and did their stuff, before we continued.
I’ve had a couple on its cousin, the class 350 when I was a caterer. We were doing 100mph and the train was completely full with people standing. We stopped very quickly. Someone pulled the alarm by accident. The woman who did it blamed her toddler, who was a good metre too short to reach it.
I was once on an XC train out of new street and just as the train was departing someone pulled the leaver so their friend could get on the train 😭
Let me guess, their friend did not get on, and, after being fined, were getting ridiculously late so the train got terminated early?
This was a fair few years back (pre COVID) so I don't remember much. I do remember we made it to our destination at Exeter though. I think the train had barely started moving so there wasn't much disruption to everyone else at Birmingham.
Fair, I’d assume they didn’t get off the hook though
I do remember it being quite a busy train (I mean you could probably have guessed that as it was an XC train leaving new street), and the guard had to push his way through to try and find the leaver that got pulled. I suspect without good CCTV footage they got away with it, though I have no idea what so ever.
Ah, well I doubt their friend got on anyway
I once pulled the emergency pascom handle on an Irish Rail DMU. There was a steam pipe which had ruptured and was sending dirty air through the HVAC into the carriage. Everyone thought it was smoke. Someone stood up and started to break the glass to open the doors while the train was at line speed. Horrified, I pulled the pascom. Immediately, there was a rush of air from the handle, towards my hand. The noise of the engine stopped immediately and the train slowed down, but not drastically so.
Good work! It might have been that the alarm handle on those trains only applies the brake a bit, which alerts the driver but ultimately gives them time to find a safe place to stop. Nowadays there’s an override that can be used to ensure you don’t stop in an unsuitable location, like a bridge or tunnel.
Had one on a 185. I think it's how wallowy the suspension on Desiros is that means you notice it. I must've been walking up a 30° angle.
I was recently on a train in the Highlands, going from Mallaig to Glasgow Queen Street with my dad, a friend, and my stepmum. I don't remember the train type (my dad is a driver, so would know though lol) and the driver had to emergency stop because something ran onto the tracks ahead. It was quite sharp and we stopped with a jolt. We weren't going very fast anyway because we'd just left a station a few minutes before, and the line speed there is not super fast. Dad immediately pulled a face and went,' That was a hard emergency brake', and then the driver came on the tannoy to apologise. However, I've been on a thameslink going from Luton to Brighton, and the driver braked hard because of trespassers on the line. That was also a sharp stop but not as dramatic as one would expect. Kudos to the driver for reacting quickly enough to stop. I get so mad at people that trespass because I know what it did to my dad when he hit someone going through a station he wasn't stopping at. Didn't kill the person that had been messing around too close to the edge but took their arm clean off. Really shook him. He's been a driver for 40 years nearly and so far hasn't hit anyone else. He's had colleagues it's happened to who couldn't get back in the cab again afterwards.
I remember this incident vividly. Absolute chaos getting home from wimbledon that day! Had to change three times to get home down the swr line :(. Stupid trespassers.
Fun fact about drugs and alcohol, the limit on the railway (atleast at GWR) is lower than actual legal limit
It’s the same everywhere. My employer’s booklet on the policy is the sternest-worded thing I’ve ever read. They will not tolerate any amount of alcohol in your body.
Everyone has a small amount of alcohol in their body as part of digestion - even teetotallers. It is a very small amount, but it is detectable. They can't have a zero limit or everyone would get sacked, so there must be a limit.
There’s also at least one very rare medical condition where you produce more ethanol than usual during digestion [Sky News Link](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/belgian-brewer-whose-body-produces-its-own-alcohol-cleared-of-drink-driving-13121342)
I figured it was the same everywhere just wasnt sure.
I've been on at least one Electrostar with a TPWS fault before - emergency brake feels very similar to a normal brake application until you actually stop, then the jolt hits and you know something is up.
Same for me on a Merseyrail 508 that got tripped by a signal (not a SPAD, some kind of power issue).
I've definitely felt emergency brakes being applied. It was a few seconds before impact at Colwich Junction in 1986.
That must have been terrifying to experience!
I've had better days. I was fortunate that the carriage I was in was one of only 3 or 4 that remained upright on the rails. The impact was huge though.
This is one thing that sucked about working in Northern Rail offices. No lunchtime beers as we had to follow the same rules as the drivers. Also, I’ve definitely felt the emergency breaks before. They were applied whilst going very fast on an Avanti West Coast train, causing me to get yoghurt all over my trousers. Why don’t they make the tables more grippy? 😂
Unless you had to declare all prescribed medication to your boss, you weren’t quite on the same rules as drivers!
Can you explain what you mean by ticket fraud? And what retailers you’re referring to?
There was a big fuss over the Post Ofice Horizon scandal that Post Office have the ability to pursue criminal prosecutions without police / CPS involvement. Everyone was horrified and asked how this could happen. Nobody has yet pointed out that train operating companies have the same power.
GSM-R is its own mobile network that allows communication between train drivers and signallers. Very impressive piece of kit.
Not to mention that the red button will broadcast the emergency call to all drivers within the radius.
We use GSM-R when working on the tracks in areas of poor phone signal, and the self control not to press the red button hehehe
Haha that’s why most (but not all) cabs have a clear plastic cover over it, to help prevent those temptations of pressing the red button 😂
I wish our handsets had that! Sometimes I’ve just thrown it in my pocket and worried about knocking the button!
As a driver, we are usually the last ones to know what is happening if there are delays. Passengers are more likely to find out the reason via social media before we do. If there's delays and held at a red, I'll send a preset message to the signaller that says "Standing at signal". If the signaller is busy dealing with something, I'll just get a text back that says "wait". That is it. As we're not allowed to have phones on or devices, we can't find out any other way. If it's taking a while, I can call our control to tell me, but pretty much just have to wait. If the signaller is kind, they'll call me up and let me know - doesn't always happen though! "Delays due to wrong type of snow or rain" is a real thing. Not used as much though these days but really light snowflakes or a light drizzle or will just sit on the railhead and mix with contaminates, this can cause extreme low adhesion and is not nice to experience. Seeing your speedometer go to 0 whilst you've got the brakes in full and you know you're at least 60mph is butt-clenching. Give me heavy rain any day! Our route knowledge is beyond just "follow the signals". We know every curve, every gradient, every station, every footbridge, every access point, every signal, every junction on our routes. We have to in order that we can think far ahead of where we are and where we want to be in terms of speed/braking at a certain point. I still travel near linespeed during thick fog, as we can tell where we are by the side to side movement and bumps in the track. There are lots of safety systems in place, for example one system is called the Vigilance/DSD. A driver has to keep a pedal depressed with their feet at all times in order to move the train. However, after a certain period, if the train has detected no input from the driver an alarm will sound. The driver then has to lift the pedal and depress it again. If the driver doesn't do this within a certain amount of time, the emergency brakes will apply. If there still isn't any input from the driver the train will send a message to the signaller informing them of this. The signaller can then call the train and make a PA announcement.
Is it true that leaves on the line is a thing since the end of steam? I once read that they used to have to cut trees back to avoid lineside fires, but now diesel/electric don't set things on fire it's not worth doing
It sure is a thing still. Leaf fall season is also a major issue for low adhesion, but there are a lot more things to mitigate against them these days. During Autumn/Winter Network Rail run Rail Head Treatment Trains around the network. These are the strange little trains with water tanks that spray high pressure jets on to the rails, which cleans the rail head of leaf mulch and other contaminants.
IIRC leaves on the line are an issue for two reasons. Firstly, they quickly turn into a slippery sludge,in the same way they can on a well troden path, which means breaking action is reduced. The second is they get whipped up into the breaks as trains pass, dry out due to the heat produced by the breaks, and then catch fire. Trees are still cut back for a number of reasons. While steam trains would throw sparks more often than diesels, diesels still can. Look for a video of a train with oil in the turbo. Trees are also cut back around overhead wires for the same reason they are cut back around the national grid. Branches falling onto the wires can cause damage and short circuits. 25kV going through a branch will quickly cause a fire or any water in the wood to flash into steam and the branch to explode.
Thanks for debunking the myth.
Really since disc brakes. Older stock used wheel tread brakes (and some locomotives had an "anti slip brake" button which would just rub the brake shoes on the wheels for the purpose of removing contamination) and these tread brakes would scrape any contaminants off the wheel. Once trains started going to disc brakes, which in normal conditions are much more effective (as well as not making an ungodly racket in the passenger coaches), this stopped happening so wheel contamination is more likely. Network Rail run RHTT (railhead treatment trains) during leaf fall season to try to prevent poor adhesion.
A large amount of the railway, including passenger and freight services, operations and engineering, is run on good will and favours between staff. It's why work to rule and overtime bans have such a huge impact.
So true. And when a train is cancelled (and no strikes that day) due to “staff shortages”the real reason is mismanagement. I’ve been waiting with full crew to take a train, and an announcement comes over the tannoy to say xxx is cancelled due to “staff shortages” We all look at each other, and go … huh? We are here? Turns out it was the set that was faulty. But they couldn’t wait to try blame us and try get the public angry because - that’s what they want. When it was their lack of maintenance and scheduling that was the reason.
Are there any documented examples of this happening?
Only way that it could be proven would be if someone leaked the crew plan, with confirmation from resources saying they were all in work and where they were supposed to be. Along with the train maintenance records and control messages to confirm the real reason for cancellation. So without breaching gdpr, nope!
As a side point for leakers out there; GDPR only covers personal data, anything not personal data isn't protected by it. It also doesn't override any right to whistleblow, say for example making someone such as a union or press aware that TOCs are blaming staff for their own mistakes though it is good practice to black out identifying data such as names of course.
Very true :) I’m sure there might be some out there! Hopefully …
I've seen this happen. Was in Brighton several years ago waiting for a Southampton Central train and got chatting to a guard who knew my dad as he was a driver for Brighton for many years and seems to know everyone on the trains lol. The announcement came on to say the train was cancelled due to staff shortage and she looked at me and said 'that's not true we're all here,' we talked about how shit the situation had gotten as this was when trains were being cancelled practically every single day for stupid reasons. Ended up getting home 2 hours later than I would have. Didn't blame the crew, from talking to my dad and his colleagues I knew the reason was bad management and told everyone I could about what was really happening.
Literally the opposite of what I do at work. If anything goes wrong, if not our staff. I’ll never blame them. Always the office. I’ll take the hit, don’t be aggressive to the public facing staff. I don’t work in trains though lol
I’m pretty sure Stephenson’s Rocket was driven by a Rest Day man.
It won the Rainhill Trials by default because he was on 12 and didn't have relief for any more testing.
He was also from Saltley.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon they were relieved by a Saltley man. (hashtag SEAGULLS)
I've often said something akin to this but yours is far simpler so I'm stealing it!
I can confirm I definitely don’t do OT/Sundays just out of kindness… more for the £40/hr Sunday rate
Yep, when I first started 12 years ago, I was told the railway runs on overtime, and it's absolutely true. I remember, I think it was last year, one passenger company was offering hundreds of pounds just to work an overtime shift. That was just 1 payment to work a shift that didn't include the hourly wage. The company I work for has done something similar in the past, but nowhere near to the same amount. They still might do, to be honest, but I only do overtime shifts as a favour to my managers cos they are decent lads who have helped me a lot.
As my mate who works on the railway once told me "the railways run on rumours, rest days and cups of tea"
That’s interesting. Makes me wonder how the culture of the company must be so important. From what I heard, Virgin had a great culture compared to Avanti, so I’m guessing that has a major impact on Avanti’s performance if staff feel like they have no loyalty to Avanti or feel mistreated etc. basically important to be a good place to work and treat people well.
It's incredibly important, and part of the reason why industrial relations are so complex and variable across the industry. Every company is different, and every region within that company may be different. A poorly resourced company with excellent relations may run a great service as staff will go above and beyond. A better resourced company with poor relations may run a poor service, as nobody will want to do anything extra for them.
Interestingly, I have also heard similar things about the move from Virgin to Avanti. A family friend of mine worked for VT (WCML) and absolutely loved it, they said there was a real spark to the company, which was utterly lost with the changeover to Avanti. They maintain it was the best company they've ever worked for.
People often complain about freight services getting in the way - they are often regulated to give passengers a better service. But in some cases, there is more value to the freight train than there is for a passenger service with 2 people on board. Whenever you hear ‘Emergency services dealing with an incident’, we all rally around our colleagues to ensure they’ll get the support they need. There are more Class 37 cranks in the industry than you think there is.
Yeah, I'd imagine that late night passenger services are pretty unimportant in comparison to the freight (whose cargo is still just as valuable at night as in the day), so I wouldn't be shocked if the priorities flipped on their head at times
I'm an ex head office worker for a TOC and I used to sit next to the ticketing guys. My favourite secret (lesser known fact) is the station "London International". Bought a few tickets to London International (coupled with Eurostar) and I've had RPOs trying to claim I had fake tickets. Very few staff (let alone customers) know about it which is sad.
See https://www.seat61.com/european-travel-from-uk-regions.htm for details
If you don’t have a Eurostar ticket for onward travel the London International ticket is invalid.
Use all the time with Eurostar. It is thankfully on the Avanti booking engine now as I'm often arriving into Euston for the Eurostar.
How would you use the station? I’ve had a quick look on the Avanti site and it just says “No fares available”.
Avanti don't sell these tickets, I don't believe any online retailer does. You have to go to the station and tell them the station code is LNE. You are supposed to have a Eurostar ticket to use them. Much more flexible and with better protections than a regular ticket
5470/LNE
I used to get London International tickets all the time, but sadly they were removed from online retailers.
Wouldn't 'London International' make perfect sense to have on a ticket for a Eurostar service? It's international and it goes to London!
Does it simply give protection from a Eurostar connection? Can it be cheaper than an Anytime ticket on a non Eurostar journey eg London to Manchester?
Texting 61016 ‘suspicious male on carriage C’ and then not coming forwards as a witness when police board the train isn’t resolvable
Y-you mean... It won't be 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥?
It's cruel on the BTP, seeing it, saying it but not being able to sort it, is like edging for them
You have to say it for it to be sorted :)
Ooooo that scratched the itch
A lot of people are scared to be witnesses for valid reasons, and besides, there is CCTV on every inch of the train, so what do you actually mean by 'isn’t resolvable'? the reporter will get in trouble?
There’s no investigation that comes out of someone saying ‘acting suspiciously’ over a text and not answering the phone when called back, unless it’s developed upon further over text. A lot of trains still do not have CCTV and even the Azumas quite often have cctv faults
It's like sending a text to your IT department saying "one of my devices isn't working can you let me know when it's fixed please asap?"
It’s like texting them saying there’s 600 devices on a train heading in your direction. One of them isn’t working. You have 2 minutes to figure out which one, this message will self destruct.
The amount of time BTP and local police spend arguing about which one of them should be going to an incident is insane.
I work in multiple ticket offices. The prevailing joke is that BTP stands for "Be There Possibly"..
I often hear the civils referred to as “the real police” & sometimes it is very true
BTP are referred to as “the Hornby police”
"See it, say it, sort it out yourselves" - An (allegedly) HO police officer on reddit
As a train technician, we know that we would never touch the windows, floor or toilet disabled handle bar. Trains are the pit of bad hygiene and some of the sights we see on the after service really are the stories of horror.
Yeah people are crazy. Aircraft are similarly gross and yet I see people going into the lav in bare feet.
this implies going anywhere on a plane with bare feet is sane, which it isnt
Make fists with your toes
Son of a bitch was right
I will try not to touch the floor next time I am on a train.
The floor is lava!
We never tell you what's really going on. A fire alarm is 'Inspector Sands', or sometimes just 'an alarm' (omitting the fire). A 'passenger incident' is vague enough to mean anything and is an excuse for everything and there are codes for every kind of spillage. If you're being a nuisance we might fake phone BTP to get you to leave.
Aha! I was at Kings Cross last week when there was an announcement that the fire alarm was about to be tested. There was then a series of a fairly low-key long tone, interspersed with "Inspector Sands to the main concourse". I was wondering who this guy was, now I know.
Anorher bit of trivia to add to this: Inspector Sands is actually a nod to the buckets of sand railway stations used to put out fires.
Interesting, I have heard that the term comes from a sand timer/clock as staff on LU have to investigate the area within a time frame.
Inspector sands allows staff to investigate without causing panic. If no staff checks the problem and says it's OK within a certain time frame, the real fire alarm will go off and the station will be evacuated.
Has anyone called inspector sands actually ended up working somewhere that they might call for him?
I'd imagine BTP sergeants called Sands are barred from promotion to inspector for that reason! Sucks for them, but it would just be too confusing for everyone.
I stayed near Waterloo last week in a hotel with an actual opening window. I was woken at 4am by a repeating message asking 'inspector sands' to go somewhere. In the morning, I thought it was a dream! Thank you very much for explaining!
A loot of the maintenance and diagnostic tools hail from the late 80's. I know of at least one diagnostic software that we are still required to use whose install instructions start with "Insert install floppy in drive A:"
Looking at you TRUST
Unlike anything needing a drive A, TRUST is mainframe based, the code is maintained and the underlying hardware supported and up to date
If it's legacy code it might not have been called drive A, but some mainframes required a floppy to start up. Indeed, that's what the floppy drive was invented for - holding the IPL code for an IBM mainframe so you didn't have to toggle it in by hand.
I'd rather not look at TRUST again as long as I live. Especially the fun of having to find a user session with a matching print session
Use fasteroute for updates, it's synced to the board and will know before the driver does if the service is being cancelled. Traksy is also handy for seeing a live map, it helps visualise the railways and the way signallers see em.
Drivers are the last to know if a service is cancelled, often being informed by the passengers!
Same on flights where cabin crew/pilots are sometimes the last to know. Got delayed then cancelled on easyJet last year and control updated the app before the staff - they were asking us for information and said that happens all the time!
This is true. Quite often the cleaners or caterers will know before the crew too.
For real?
If you tell staff first, passengers will say "But my app says..."!
Maybe a slight exaggeration implying every time, but it's not uncommon.
Would this be any app that uses national rail enquiries api or does fasterroute have a secret sauce to update quicker than other outlets?
Fasteroute is great
Sounds cool but map option doesn't appear to work, is it only on certain lines or desktop only?
Welsh person here. If you see ysgol on the emergency signs it means ladder and not school though they are both spelt the same way 😐
always put the toilet lid down before you flush
I, too, have witnessed the aftermath of a reverse flush.
I'd like to know what happens, but for my own sanity and especially on a Monday morning, I dont know if I want to know
Train toilets these days are pretty much all vacuum toilets, like on aircraft and ships. If you’re sat on it when it flushes, it may try to pull you in - although the seat is designed to that air flows under it, so someone’s bum can’t make a seal over it. If they become blocked, you can do a “service flush” (vacuum but no water) to try and clear it. You can also do a reverse flush, where the vacuum is reversed to try and clear the obstruction. If you repeat this, it usually adds more air pressure each time. By this point, you’re playing Russian roulette. Eventually (or rather quickly), the obstruction will become dislodged at velocity, usually becoming liquidised in the process. The person I saw do this had the good sense to put the lid down and stand on it, but it still looked like the toilet was vomiting.
The lid is supposed to be clamped down for a reverse flush. The HazID for the IEP trains identified an incident where a member of maintenance staff attempted to self resolve a blockage whilst a train was in service. Quite a surprising amount of damage to the panelling considering the payload was a liquid.
beautiful turn of phrase there: "self resolve a blockage". love it.
that on the underground they make you walk the long way to stop congestion and over grounding also there is a secret overground station called Battersea park which isn't on any map.
So this is from 2007-10 when I worked in ticketing in east Anglia : tickets booked over the phone were posted by untracked mail. So you could just call , say the tickets never came, and 100% of the time get a free extra ticket. Similarly, if you wanted to change an advance ticket : you could just call and say you were sold the wrong date / time. It was never checked, we just reissued a new ticket. I don't think phone sales even exist now, so consider this useless info.
Small trick I personally use thanks to rail experience. When I travel from stations which don't display platform until just before departure despite the stock for it sitting there (like kgx), I will use tiger worldline global staff view to get headcode, then use opentraintimes map to get platform of that headcode. This means I always get first dibs on seats, while joe public is still waiting beyond gateline staring at the cis boards.
As a retired driver I still use RTT when traveling or meeting someone. When I was working it was often more useful and informative than our own control 🤣
They won't tell you. It's secret.
This is a relatively minor thing but those little stores you find at stations? The guards actually give a shit. When I was a student I worked at one part time. A guy came in and stole a muffin (yes, really). I knew what was going on and as I chased him down the street I asked the guard to watch the till for me. He knew what to do. Eventually I caught up with the guy who simply put the muffin on the floor and said "fine, you have it". Which I did. I happily ate it on the way back to the station. When I got there I asked the guard if everything was ok. He said that a guy came in after I left, tried to get behind the counter and saw him sat there, did a 180 and left. It all got reported to the police. Nice muffin.
What flavour?
Blueberry if I remember correctly
There’s an app called DB Navigator that shows everything on the network
Unless there’s a whole hidden area of functionality to the DB Navigator app that I’ve never discovered (despite being a massive train nerd and having spent lots of time travelling on trains in Germany), I think you’ve got the wrong subreddit :) This is r/UKtrains, not German trains :)
DB navigator works here, but I think you can’t just access it here without a code or something, my friend knows people working for DB in the uk
They love arguing over on board prices compared to trainline advance prices 😑 also standing waiting for passengers to load them.
Hence the word “advance”. Granted, the advance ticket system is flawed and doesn’t compensate for delayed trains, which is where discretion comes into play, but if you’re trying to get an advance single onboard a service, the ticket machines cannot issues those tickets. Most TOCs also have a “Buy Before You Board” Policy (Condition 6 NRCOT) therefore can only charge you an anytime ticket onboard unless there were mitigating circumstances. TL;DR: Ticketing is broken
That the Glasgow Subway (SPT) is a circle and you can go to any stop on this circle either on the inner or outer lines.
If you use opentraintimes.com you will usually see cancellations and delays before they go onto the information screens or announcements. On thameslink trains the back first class carriage is always open for any ticket to use. https://x.com/mrtimdunn/status/1728478311876071563?s=46&t=WaTP0L6RgClbEfun4oj6XQ
If anyone's got any cool anecdotes about the underground infrastructure and tunnels under train/tube stations please drop it 💪 I find that shit really interesting
It costs upto 800 pound a minute when a train is held up shocking this is going back 10 years lol