London's Orbital Railway

Contributing writer 'DB' offers the following, to mark a milestone in rail travel around the Capital - literally.

Today saw the opening of Phase 1A - the extension of the East London Line from Dalston Junction to Highbury & Islington. Thus it will be possible to complete an outer orbital route of London without having to leave the rail network, albeit not yet on the same train. From Highbury & Islington you would take a London Ovevrground train to Clapham Junction over the North London Line, changing there for a Southern service to Victoria. Alighting at Crystal Palace, you would then change for another London Overground service to take you back to Highbury & Islngton.

On the North London Line, frequency is typically around 8 trains per hour (tph) - alternately serving Clapham Junction and Richmond. Southern's Victoria to London Bridge service via Crystal Palace is 4 tph. And finally London Overground from Crystal Palace to Highbury is 4 tph, although staying on the Southern service for one stop more would see 8 tph as trains from West Croydon join the route here.

By December 2012 the extension from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction will be completed and the whole circuit can be done on London Overground trains, although not the same train throughout.

This map includes the proposed extension to between Clapham Junction to Surrey Quays via Peckham Rye. At the moment you would have to go via Crystal Palace.
Click map to enlarge

The Flying Scotsman Returns

A few days ago, train operating company East Coast revealed its much anticipated timetable that commences in May. With a working name some would argue was over-optomistic, the Eureka! timetable has caused quite a storm with other train operators, user groups, passengers and Network Rail. It has been postponed due to the final versions being contested and freight operators still aren't happy. The main 'beef' concerns too much priority being afforded East Coast at the expense of other franchised and open access TOCs. Up to six months ago, some freight companies hadn't even been consulted at all!


But it's here now and you can view it all by clicking here.

Of particular note is a new headline 4-hour journey between Edinburgh and London King's Cross. Named the Flying Scotsman, East Coast has ensured that the direct service, calling only at Newcastle, offers what many in the rail industry see as the holy grail: an Anglo-Scottish journey time of 4 hours.

1E01, the Flying Scotsman, departing Edinburgh on Mondays to Fridays at 0540, calls at only Newcastle (0702-0703) before arriving in King's Cross at 0940. This 'crack express' reaffirms the prestigiousness once placed in such a service, that had been allowed to wilt somewhat during privatisation, with both GNER and NXEC having downgraded their named Flying Scotsman journeys by inserting additional calling points to slow end-to-end journey times and thus allow other, less prestigiously titled journeys a superior duration.

The Flying Scotsman headboard is now carried mainly by charter trains operating the Anglo-Scottish route. Hopefully East Coast's 4-hour crack express will do the same from 23 May

The Flying Scotsman is synonymous with the East Coast Main Line, for it was long this route in 1862 that the first Anglo-Scottish passenger train operated, with a duration of 10.5 hours and a lunch stop at York. It was named the Special Scots Express. By the turn of the last century, advances in technology allowed the steam locomotive to operate at higher speeds along the route, which saw a reduction in duration to just 8.5 hours. From 1923 the Special Scots Express was renamed the Flying Scotsman.

So prestigious is the name that GNER - the first privatised operator to run along the ECML - referred to itself as the operator using 'The Route of the Flying Scotsman', with the statement adorning each and every trainset in its fleet.


The trains associated with the Flying Scotsman have been reasonably varied, with some of the first being GNR's Stirling 4-2-2 'Singles', followed by the first examples in the UK of the British Atlantics (Ivatt C2s); Gresley's A1, A3 and A4 'Pacifics' followed and the first diesel loco used by British Rail was the Class 55 Deltic, being replaced by the Class 43 HST and the current Class 91 '225s' that work today's more lacklustre service. The 0540 Edinburgh-London is booked to be worked by electric traction, so the '91s' will continue to be deployed.

Back to the Eureka! timetable, and there are a number of obvious advances, namely direct London-Harrogate and London-Lincoln services. It's just a shame Lincoln missed out on its remaining six daily journeys. More on that in the next LEYTR magazine.

Tram death shows up BTP

An inquest into the death of a 30-year old police data handler just over 7 years ago has allowed some catastrophic details to come to light concerning the manner in which British Transport Police's CID officers were rostered. The incident involved a Midlands Metro tram.

Following a Christmas party, 30-year old Cheryl Flanagan was found dead on the Midland Metro tram tracks shortly after being hit by a tram at 2300hrs. She had been arguing with her boyfriend, a police officer. The tram driver saw what he believed to be a bag of sand on the tracks and applied his brakes accordingly, but continued onto the next stop, not considering what he had collided with was a body.

A Midland Metro tram in 2003

Up to this point, a tragic accident, potentially fuelled by alcohol, would be a likely catalyst. However, the manner in which the Police dealt with the incident made matters considerably worse.

For a start, no one from British Transport Police's CID was able to attend as they were all at a Christmas party themselves - every last one of them. Perhaps it was the same one that the deceased had been attending? The only person on duty was a Chief Inspector who, despite requests for backup, received no one.

Eventually a CID officer was sent, but from Bristol, just over 100 miles away, only to be later turned back by a senior officer. This was unfolding as a growing number of onlookers - including Miss Flanagan's parents - waited anxiously for Police assistance at the side of the tracks.

The inquest had been primarily called as there had been some suspicion over Miss Flanagan's death: the deceased's boots had been removed, an ambulance had not immediately been called and an initial request for scenes-of-crimes officers was denied.

The hearing continues.

LEYTR Comment: The facts that most interest us are not in dispute. A young female had been struck by a tram travelling between 25-30mph and lay dead on the tracks. Police assistance was not forthcoming as those allocated the responsibility to investigate had all been given the evening off to attend their Christmas party. This is not some rural backwater, but the West Midlands, home to the country's second-largest conurbation. To have an officer dispatched from a city 100 miles away is laughable. More a token gesture than a serious act. And the tragic irony is that the deceased was connected with the local Police force! It has left many in the West Midlands shocked; if procedures are not in place to afford a member of the Police the dignity and thoroughness required of such an incident, what chance is there for anyone else?

Japanese Crossing

Having recently undertaken 7 hours' of training that forms part of the now mandatory Certificate of Professional Competence qualification for anyone who wishes to be able to drive a PCV from September 2013, the most (dare I say it) useful aspect of the day's work was learning what a Japanese Crossing is. There is only one in the UK.

Anyone with a good understanding of the Highway Code will be familiar with Pelican, Puffin, Toucan and even Pegasus Crossings, but I'd never come across a Japanese Crossing before.

It was opened on 3 November 2009 in central London, at Oxford Circus. Being the first of its kind in the UK, similar crossings are used throughout Tokyo, with the concept aiming to be revolutionary in traffic management (had it been a UK company, they'd have chosen the line: pedestrian-traffic interface solutions or something equally as ghastly).

But what is it? It's so simple that I'm staggered we've only recently cottoned on. At a four-way crossroads, controlled by lights, all traffic temporarily stops and pedestrians are allowed to cross all four roads at the intersection (as now) plus cross diagonally, as the images below show:


The crossing cost £5 million and forms part of the plan to renovate the local area, with wider pavements and better access to Oxford Circus Tube station. We made use of the crossing while on our 2010 LEYTR Jolly Boys' Outing and noticed a countdown shown on each of the traffic lights to pedestrians know how long they have before a set of lights will turn green for motor vehicles.

British designer Atkins installed the crossing in London and claim that it can now handle double the number of people that used to be able to pass through. In tandem with other improvements to the intersection, 70% more space has been freed up for pedestrians.

It has, however, slowed the traffic flow down. This will have undoubtedly had an impact on journey times for the buses that use the already-congested Oxford and Regent Streets. Now, in every traffic light cycle, all directions of traffic come to a standstill. Previously, both the green figure (can't say 'green man' now) for pedestrians and a green traffic light for motor vehicles could be shown at the same point in the cycle, but this meant pedestrians couldn't get from the south-east corner across to the north-west corner in one go; they'd have to do it in two stages, which meant crowding at the middle point. The Japanese Crossing has eradicated the need for pedestrians to dwell at the expense of traffic flow, but since private motorist are severely outnumbered in this area of London by public transport, the increase in time taken to cross the intersection has not been widely criticised.

It could be argued that the average speed of traffic in the area is so low that the overall increase in the traffic light cycle has very little impact at all on traffic flow and to some extent we see their point. This would seem to suggest that the Japanese Crossing has limited scope for use elsewhere in the UK, except areas of dense pedestrian population and such slow average journey times by motor vehicles that the increase in time taken to cross their intersections will have very little notice.

Devon Country Council has helpfully defined each pedestrian crossing type in use today, though have omitted the Japanese Crossing, presumably because it falls outside their area.

**UPDATE** from Michael Dolbear:

Sirs,

"There is only one in the UK"

"Oh no it isn't"

Every writer knows that posting that phase will trigger that reply.

Back in 2009, the Oxford Circus diagonal crossing was extensively
discussed on Usenet uk.transport.london and at least two prior example
were mentioned.

I see that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Circus has it now

"It was noted that a similar crossing in Balham, South London had
previously opened in 2005 at a cost of only £98,000."

Indeed, subject to definitional argument, the crossroads in the centre of
Walton-on-Thames has one or at any rate an "all green for pedestrians"
phase so a diagonal crossing is safe even no diagonal crosswalk is
marked on the road surface. (intersection of High, Church, Bridge streets
with Hepworth Way).

One over

It would appear that less than a week after uploading the video, YouTube pulled it. We hope readers enjoyed (if that's the right word) what they saw before its removal.

Transit Lite

Without warning the last edition of New Transit in 2010 covered both November and December, so a total of 11 issues were produced last year, not the advertised 12. And the first of 2011 was titled January/February, which means this £94 p/a publication could well hit subscribers' doormats with the same annual frequency as the not-for-profit LEYTR.

Another striking observation is that now only TWO people appear employed to produce the magazine's meat. The same as the number of LEYTR editors! New Transit no longer carries a £4.50 cover price - it's gone completely, although we understand that it was impossible for anyone to purchase it at this price from anywhere other than Landor Publishing, who then charged p+p which made the annual subscription a shade cheaper for 12 copies. The LEYTR cover paper quality is now far superior to that used by New Transit, if the latest Jan/Feb 2011 edition is to become the norm.

Has the recession hit transport publishings? National newspapers have seen a decline in readership for many years, spurred on by the Internet and mobile phone applications. We assumed trade magazines were a little more hardy - perhaps they have been but now the cracks are showing? New Transit not long ago revitalised itself, being produced at a frequency that saw 100% fewer editions per year. The same appears to be true again. By contrast, CBW, or Coach & Bus Week as it reverted to, has been available from most WH Smiths for the past couple of months, with a fresh new look and a decent discount for a 3-year subscription.

And what of New Transit's subscribers, who have paid up to three years in advance? Some (us!) were a little annoyed to see the fortnightly broadsheet-style mag become what it did in 2009 - a monthly features-based publication, and now a further reduction to potentially 6 copies per year.

We consider Transit's heyday to be its original format where its analysis of operator performance was truly market leading. Not much of that now. Not much of anything. A sad day indeed.

Making the Best of a Bad Deal

So Stagecoach sold its Preston Bus operation to Rotala. It seems an unusual choice but Rotala (who always used to be referred to as the 'AIM-listed Rotala') seemed chipper when releasing a statement about their recent purchase.

Omnibuses covered all of the bases at the time the purchase was made known. Except one.

Stagecoach did not want to sell Preston Bus. It fought a long battle with the Office of Fair Trading and Competition Commission (CC), citing many reasons why its ownership and integrated operation with its established, former Ribble, business throughout Manchester and Lancashire would provider a better deal for its passengers (and shareholders).

So when the inevitable became known and Stagecoach admitted defeat and placed their recent acquisition for sale, presumably they didn't have to sell to the highest bidder?

Theoretically, could Stagecoach have chosen to sell to Rotala over Arriva or First (both of whom had showed an interest in Preston Bus) or even Transdev because the former poses far less of a threat than the latter three? It is a slightly unusual £3.5 million purchase for a company with no operations locally.

Clearly, Stagecoach would have much preferred to retain Preston Bus - after all many thousands of pounds had already been spent on the bus war before the purchase and on integrating both companies after it. But provided the seller was happy to not accept the highest bid, it's a rouse that could potentially be employed by operators who fall foul of the CC in subsequent cases.

A little more massage...

The revelation that East Coast had massaged its train performance has angered some other train operators. Even when East Coast went public with special timetables during the snow and ice in December it did so to make the timetable robust. This seems to suggest that the operation of a special timetable was operationally-led rather than customer-led.

Yes, snow and ice does have a major impact on running long-distance, high speed train. Snow is thrown un up and sticks under the train. This then forms into packed ice which at high speed then falls off and can either bounce under the train with the potential to cause damage under the train, or can be thrown up the side of the train damaging the outer skins of windows. The packed ice also has to be melted and removed on depots at night to allow safety inspections to take place each night on depots.

In contrast to East Coast, Virgin Trains took the decision to continue to operate its normal timetable. Yes, there were delays but as a senior Virgin Trains manager told LEYTR, "For our passengers the fact that they had confidence that their train would run was more important than performance. We served all destinations throughout the two periods of bad weather and during December out of more that 4000 trains book to run we operated around 94.5%. Performance was just under 66%."

The VT man added: "over half of our passengers make reservations before travel, so to alter the timetable also causes massive inconvenience. There are also many thousands of passengers who travel by rail just once a year and can be really confused with by timetable changes and disruption".

This is true though. Imagine booking an Advance train ticket where the advertised departure is the only one one which travel is permitted for the low price paid and assuming sufficient time is built into your connection at King's Cross or Leeds only to find that your service is running 28 minutes late, that you've either missed or likely to miss your connection on which you must travel, and yet East Coast provide another punctual journey.

If we had the time, m'colleague and I would happily sift through arrival and departure times for Newark or Grantham stations on one specific date and apply the 'window of tolerance' scheduled bus and coach operators have to abide by. It would be very telling indeed.

To end, it's worth pointing out that despite a reduced timetable to make operations more robust, East Coast performance in December was worse than that recorded by opposing Anglo-Scottish operator Virgin Trains.

Fancy a massage?

It has been revealed that during key dates during November and December, nationalised train operating company (TOC) East Coast had permission granted to add extra time to their long-distance rail journeys in order to make them more punctual. This was without consultation with the very people who both pay for the services and who travel on the trains in question.

Not only that, the timetables were not altered, only the working times used by the rail industry, to which the public has no access. Often guards' (or drivers when guards do not control when a train departs a station/guards not present) duty sheets show two departure times from certain stations - one is the published timing for the traveller and the other is the working timetable.

And guess which set of timings is used to rate TOC punctuality? That's right, not the ones used by every passenger who ever sets foot on any train in the country but the secret industry timings!

So, you have a situation where a train can legitimately depart from a station at a different time to that stated in the public timetable/website; the punctuality of a TOC is rated against a secretive timing and the manner in which a train's punctuality is recorded is a complete fix - only the time at the journey's final station is taken into consideration and a leeway of 9:59 is afforded East Coast in any case.

Up to TWENTY, yes two-zero minutes were added to the journey times between the final two calling points of East Coast's journeys during the key Nov/Dec dates so that their punctuality could be recorded as 'improved'. In the event, the company managed an impressive but outrageously disingenuous 99.4% during the massaged period. But passengers still believed they were arriving late as they were not told. I would love to know whether the automatic compensation payouts were still paid, despite many trains that passengers believed were 24 minutes late actually arriving on time, so far as Network Rail and East Coast were concerned.

Anyone who has any role to play in running scheduled bus and coach services will be shaking their head at this point. Not only is the punctuality of scheduled operation of bus and coach services checked at any point VOSA compliance officers choose to observe, but the 9:59 long distance/4:59 local service lateness tolerance simply does not exist. 95% of scheduled bus and coach services must arrive within 1 minute before or 5 minutes after the passenger timetabled times. And this is all times. A route with 20 timing points sees all twenty required to conform.

A train from Edinburgh to London King's Cross can have around 10 timing/calling points and the timings to which the guard permits the driver to depart do not have to necessarily be the same as those in the public timetable and none except the last at King's Cross is used to record punctuality. With the 9:59 lateness tolerance and up to 20 minutes secretly added to some journeys, a total delay into KX of 29:59 would still have been recorded as punctual.

The railway does not suffer from seemingly endless temporary traffic lights, not does it suffer with tractors or combine harvesters or even learner drivers. East Coast itself has surprisingly less integration with other TOCs, which lowers the potential for problems as operators vie for priority. And its services are given priority headcodes, so signallers afford their trains priority over local, stopping services whenever practicable.

To some - many - the almost secretive antics of Network Rail and East Coast make a mockery of train travel, they really do. It doesn't take long for someone you start chatting to on a train to start criticising the service they receive - both in terms of comfort (standing for hundreds of miles) or price (some season tickets have increased by far more than the headline 5.8% for regulated fares due to a special leeway afforded TOCs by the now Coalition-run DfT). If you then drop the bombshell that their performance is rated against invisible timings and that a commuter travelling between York-Newark can always travel on a train that is late and that these journeys could technically be considered punctual, the whole conversation spirals out of control and incomprehensible laughter will surely ensue.

And to show that not only East Coast is capable of imaginative accountancy - through legitimate means - one TOC 'down south' has released its punctuality figures to two decimal places, that just happens to be 0.04% above the level at which compensation needs to be paid to many of its long-suffering commuters.