Train GraphicClick on the map to explore geographics
 
I need help
FAQ
Emergency
About .
Travel & transport from BBC stories as at 10:55 28 Mar 2024
- Man suffers life-threatening injuries after train stabbing
- How do I renew my UK passport and what is the 10-year rule?
* Easter travel warning as millions set to hit roads
Read about the forum [here].
Register [here] - it's free.
What do I gain from registering? [here]
 02/06/24 - Summer Timetable starts
17/08/24 - Bus to Imber
27/09/25 - 200 years of passenger trains

On this day
28th Mar (1988)
Woman found murdered on Orpington to London train (*)

Train RunningCancelled
09:12 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
09:29 Weston-Super-Mare to London Paddington
09:30 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads
10:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
10:30 London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare
10:41 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
11:00 Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington
11:05 Swindon to Westbury
11:16 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
11:23 Weston-Super-Mare to London Paddington
11:30 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads
11:50 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
12:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central
12:17 Westbury to Swindon
12:30 London Paddington to Weston-Super-Mare
13:15 Swindon to Westbury
14:19 Westbury to Swindon
15:14 Swindon to Westbury
Short Run
06:00 London Paddington to Penzance
06:05 Penzance to London Paddington
07:28 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
07:33 Weymouth to Gloucester
09:45 Bristol Temple Meads to Salisbury
09:50 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
10:35 London Paddington to Exeter St Davids
10:55 Paignton to London Paddington
11:12 Salisbury to Bristol Temple Meads
11:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
12:03 London Paddington to Penzance
Delayed
06:37 Plymouth to London Paddington
07:10 Penzance to London Paddington
08:03 London Paddington to Penzance
08:23 Southampton Central to Bristol Temple Meads
08:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
08:35 Plymouth to London Paddington
08:48 London Paddington to Swansea
09:04 London Paddington to Plymouth
09:30 Weymouth to Gloucester
09:37 London Paddington to Paignton
09:51 Warminster to Gloucester
10:04 London Paddington to Penzance
10:23 London Paddington to Oxford
11:03 London Paddington to Plymouth
13:03 London Paddington to Plymouth
PollsOpen and recent polls
Closed 2024-03-25 Easter Escape - to where?
Abbreviation pageAcronymns and abbreviations
Stn ComparatorStation Comparator
Rail newsNews Now - live rail news feed
Site Style 1 2 3 4
Next departures • Bristol Temple MeadsBath SpaChippenhamSwindonDidcot ParkwayReadingLondon PaddingtonMelksham
Exeter St DavidsTauntonWestburyTrowbridgeBristol ParkwayCardiff CentralOxfordCheltenham SpaBirmingham New Street
March 28, 2024, 11:03:16 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Forgotten your username or password? - get a reminder
Most recently liked subjects
[182] West Wiltshire Bus Changes April 2024
[103] would you like your own LIVE train station departure board?
[70] Return of the BRUTE?
[56] Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption el...
[44] Reversing Beeching - bring heritage and freight lines into the...
[24] CrossCountry upgrade will see 25% more rail seats
 
News: A forum for passengers ... with input from rail professionals welcomed too
 
   Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: 31st March 2019 Best Day ever for Train Running?  (Read 2426 times)
smokey
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 1129


View Profile
« on: March 31, 2019, 19:03:32 »

Hi I'm back been quite a while since I posted,

However checking up on Realtime Trains today, hundreds of Trains this morning were arriving around 60 minutes early from Penzance to Edinburgh and all points East and West.
Not much good when you find your train had left 60 minutes Early.

I'm fully aware this is because someone somewhere hadn't advanced the clock from GMT to BST, Realtime Trains get their information from Network Rail (and other sources) but won't this little error knock train running results skyward (could it effect Season Tickets refunds? I'm not sure if Sundays count on season ticket refunds for poor running!
Not impressed NR» (Network Rail - home page)Grin
Logged
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2019, 19:31:33 »

Hi I'm back been quite a while since I posted,

Welcome back!  ... nearly two years!

Wondering if the error is Network Rail's feed ... or Real Time Train's interpretation.   Did you look at Tiger , for example http://iris2.rail.co.uk/tiger/render.asp?file=304759.xml

Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
bobm
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 9809



View Profile
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2019, 19:34:59 »

Good to have you back!
Logged
stuving
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 7154


View Profile
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2019, 19:39:37 »

Hi I'm back been quite a while since I posted,

Welcome back!  ... nearly two years!

Wondering if the error is Network Rail's feed ... or Real Time Train's interpretation.   Did you look at Tiger , for example http://iris2.rail.co.uk/tiger/render.asp?file=304759.xml

I see one train that had a dwell at Wokingham from 10:181/2 to 11:19 ... so it looks  more like a source error. If it's a switch in RTT» (Real Time Trains - website) it would more likely be retrocative when corrected, I think. On the other hand, OTT (Open Train Times website) has it correct from earlier - but then a fancier correction facility could do that. So that's a definite maybe, then.
Logged
stuving
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 7154


View Profile
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2019, 19:58:36 »

This is from a page of helpful info on the TRUST (Train Running System TOPS) data put out on the Train Movements data feed:

Quote
All timestamp values are in milliseconds since the UNIX epoch. But it appears that in certain fields this is incorrect during British Summer Time (UK (United Kingdom) DST) and is actually one hour in the future. You will need to subtract one hour in order for the times to be valid. This is known to affect the following fields:

    gbtt_timestamp
    planned_timestamp
    actual_timestamp
    canx_timestamp
    dep_timestamp
    orig_loc_timestamp

These are timestamps within the data, about trains, rather than for messaging process. At least I think so, though the choice of time format is a bit odd in that case!

So it looks as if there has to be "BST fudge" flag set in RTT» (Real Time Trains - website), to correct incoming times, and it wasn't set until about 11:19. (That's 11:19 BST.)
Logged
bradshaw
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 1450



View Profile
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2019, 20:11:11 »

Via Twitter by Tom Cairns

“I'm aware of the glitch on @realtimetrains. Unfortunately the code to handle the date changes appears to have stopped working for the first time overnight and it's not something that I've told it to monitor before”

https://twitter.com/swlines/status/1112296489114652672?s=21

The Twitter feed explains what happened
Logged
TaplowGreen
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 7743



View Profile
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2019, 21:53:13 »

.......bit early for April Fools day......can't be serious......can it?
Logged
stuving
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 7154


View Profile
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2019, 00:56:23 »

There's quite a lot that can be deduced from that Data Feeds information (above) - but time offsets are always confusing, so it helps to check it step by step.

1. The words say that times are given in a standard Unix format, so once scaled and shifted so zero is at 00:00 (GMT) today they are in GMT. Or, put that another way, in order to shift them so zero is at 00:00 BLT* today you need to know whether to do it for GMT or BST. So times as supplied are unconverted GMT.

2. But not for the timestamps listed, one of which is the one you need in TRUST (Train Running System TOPS) data in most cases (actual_timestamp). Those have an hour added to therm, i.e. when processed as intended for timestamps in GMT they end up in BST.

3. I seem to remember that RTT» (Real Time Trains - website) only uses TRUST data if if doesn't have better data available (from the Train Describer feed, I think).

4. What we see in an early train such as this one (2P11 0620 RDG(resolve)-PAD» (Paddington (London) - next trains)) is actual times an hour before scheduled ones, which are the true times as it ran near enough to time. So it left Southall at 07:02 BST, 06:02 GMT, and was shown at 06:02. That must be a GMT value that hasn't been converted.

5. For most trains there are some times (even well before RTT was fixed) that show the right hour. In the example, its actual arrival at Langley is 06:46, vs WTT (Working Time-Table) 06:48. That looks like one of those TRUST timestamps which is in BST though it shouldn't be. If one of those was converted but not fudged to correct the error, it would display as 07:48 - an hour late.

6. Since the fudge factor is to subtract an hour, if applied to data without the error it would cancel the conversion to BST, which is what we see. But it is hard to see how it could happen, for any plausible way of implementing it so as to affect just those five named values.

So given what we do see, my earlier suggestion was wrong - it was the standard BST conversion that was missing until fixed at 11:19.

* British Legal Time, for want of a better single name to be valid all year. For some reason we don't have a name for the time we actually use, which is either GMT or BST as appropriate. Most other time zones' names do apply all year. The problem they have is that Summertime or Daylight Saving doesn't have a counterpart for the winter period.
Logged
CyclingSid
Data Manager
Hero Member
******
Posts: 1918


Hockley viaduct


View Profile
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2019, 17:19:50 »

NATO time zones are not going to be comprehensible to most people; but we went from Zulu on Saturday to Alpha on Sunday. BST is generically known as Daylight Saving Time. GMT is really a hangover from the Empire, officially it is now UTC.

At least we don't have Double Summer Time, possibly died with the end of WWII (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945)
Logged
stuving
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 7154


View Profile
« Reply #9 on: April 01, 2019, 18:52:30 »

NATO time zones are not going to be comprehensible to most people; but we went from Zulu on Saturday to Alpha on Sunday. BST is generically known as Daylight Saving Time. GMT is really a hangover from the Empire, officially it is now UTC.

There's no shortage of labels for all-year fixed offsets from UTC - that's not the tricky bit. But I was wrong to say there is no name for out timezone - the one we share with Ireland and Portugal - it's WET (Western European Time). It's just that noone uses it; still less do they use its seasonal flavours of WEST and WEWT.

Partly that's because we think "winter time" is just normal time with no extra hour, so needs no extra label. The first part is true, but the second isn't as soon as you want to talk clearly about what the time is in winter. The people who make lists of these things and put them on the web say that CET (Controlled Emission Toilet) (for example) is the winter one only, and it's CEST in the summer. I reckon if you need to set up an event (say a conference call) across Europe, "9:00 CET" will be understood as clock time in Germany winter and summer.

Those lists also show the American usage, e.g. Eastern Time which flips between Eastern Standard Time and Eastern Daylight Time. That is pretty logical, provided us outsiders add "US" in front of it, though the different meaning of the inserted "S" is a bit annoying.

And all that confusion exists before even thinking about making changes ...
Logged
Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

 
Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.2 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
This forum is provided by customers of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link to report). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants

Jump to top of pageJump to Forum Home Page