Trains must leave on time AT ALL COSTS? Discretion?

[whole diary]

[swrural]

Oxman's explanations (grateful for those) tell me that the first example that started this off of the Taunton not waiting for the Plymouth and then doing so a few hundred yards down the line (except not with the opportunity to transfer pax^▸ (passengers)    ) was essentially a Control issue (lack of).  Human judgement error perhaps, but one hopes lessons are (were) learned.

It seems to me that the commercial issues appear to be outweighing the customer care ones.  I also think that  there is an immense difference between an unexpected connection delay for pax where connecting services run every half hour (stretch to an hour then?) and those that are less frequent (or last train situations).  Perhaps ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) (is that the right authority?) could set a limit to a 'customer care delay allowance' and specify hold times for infrequent connections.  I don't see that as too horrendous to administer as the RCH dealt with far more complex commercial inter company situations 100 years ago and we have computers now.  These already deal with complex delay transactions.

The BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) example given above of a forced 4 hour wait was wincing to read about even now.     

[ChrisB]

You are right - the cost of delay minutes mean that its not usually worth waiting in case there's someone wanting to connect. Cheaper to offer that person compensation for a delayed journey.

[Southern Stag]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) policy is to offer alternative transport if you will have to wait for longer than an hour after missing a connection, however XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) will not offer alternative transport unless the delay is greater than two hours. This is usually in the form of taxis or a bus but staff once arranged for a train to make an additional call to drop me off when I had missed a connection.

[swrural]

Clearly SS, your real name is Chris Green.   

Actually, of course, that is a useful alternative solution when force majeur occurs (better than farce majeur anyway    ).   

[grahame]

TRTS^▸ (Train Ready To Start. A plunger/switch pressed by platform dispatch staff that informs the signaller that a train is ready to depart.)? Train Ready To Start?

Yes - it was spelt out in full on the relevant button on the old platform 8 at Reading in years gone by.

Picking up on Oxman's very informative post, I did ask about the procedure for holding Golden Valley line trains at Swindon last year.  Apparently they can hold for eight minutes without further reference to Control.  I have also noticed, in the mid to late evenings, if the train from London is late they will often try to route it into Platform 3 so that passengers making the connection can get on the Cheltenham train with the minimum of delay.

I have more details, bobm ...



What are the waits for the TransWilts - there are some tight connections and long waits if they miss!