On Apr 30, 4:03*pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

PhilD wrote:

[uk.transport.london added]

this being about the national rail combined timetable - 'NRTT', produced by
Network Rail

It's interesting, too, that *table 178 (that includes the new East
London Line services) has separate entries for New Cross Gate and New
Cross Gate Station Ell. *Are these not the same station? *Certainly as
far as the general travelling public is concerned they are the same,
with no need to distinguish (southbound) a separate platform as a
separate "station". *I notice that northbound no trains stop at "New
Cross Gate Station Ell" (unless I've missed one!).

Logically this may have arisen because the southbound ELL platform is on a
separate network to the down slow, as the boundary between the Network Rail
and London Rail infrastructure is further south IIRC - but given the
apparent problems (reported in the thread about summer timetable cuts) with
the NRTT production it may be the sort of formatting problem that would
normally be manually overidden?

What does seem a major problem with NR Table 178 is that they seem to have
ordered it wrongly from left to right, in order of departure times s/b from
London Bridge and Dalston Jn. *What should be the case on a timetable with
multiple branches at top and bottom (IYSWIM) is that the trains should be
ordered left to right by their timings through the common part of the route,
in this case just the section from New Cross Gate to Sydenham.

As a quick aside I did in the past describe the ELL as being
(operationally speaking) more or less a branch line of the LB&SCR main
line albeit one with it's own sub-branch to New Cross - though when
phase 2b opens the Clapham Jn that visualisation would be stretched
somewhat! Point being, table 178 is where the ELL belongs. On to the
business though...

With regard to your point Paul, yes, what a nasty and confusing mess -
e.g. the LO 06:30 from Dalston Jn to Crystal Palace is shown a few
columns to the left of the Southern 06:36 from London Bridge to East
Croydon (which continues to Caterham), but the latter SN train is the
first one down the LB&SCR, so calls at all stations from New Cross
Gate to Sydenham ten or so minutes before the LO train gets there.

Even LO trains can be in the wrong order - the LO 05:40 from Dalston
Jn to West Croydon appears a column to the left of the LO 05:47 New
Cross Gate to West Croydon, despite the fact the latter runs 15
minutes in front of the former down the LB&SCR.

I haven't looked at any of the other tables, but it seems as though
the new system may simply order each column according to the time the
train sets out at its station of origin, with no regard as to what
happens later.

(I'm tempted to suggest we should perhaps get used to such things,
both on the railways and elsewhere, what with the spectre of
'efficiency savings' and protecting the front line by cutting the
back...)


BTW I see SN's new pocket timetable for this route don't show the LO
services, so they have followed the precedent of the current SN
Croydon - Milton Keynes booklet, which only mentions the existence of LO
services as a note in the text .

That's a bit of a shame, not very civic minded of them. Perhaps the
forthcoming LO ELL timetable booklet will include Southern services.