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While a trouble-free journey should be expected, as a professional observer you learn more about the performance of the railway when things go wrong. Resilience is currently at the top of infrastructure concerns, but the concept also applies to operations. A couple of recent journeys on the East Coast main line brought this home to me.
For a trip to Leeds in mid-November, the plan was Great Northern from Welwyn Garden City to Stevenage for a connection into an inter-city train, in this case the 07.55 to Leeds. Those who recall my aborted trip to Darlington when I missed this connection at Stevenage by seconds will appreciate why I was nervous this time.
Fortunately Realtime Trains gives a degree of insight, so as soon as I got out of bed I entered Great Northern’s 07.05 off King’s Cross on the mobile app and could follow its progress. In the event it was one minute late at WGC, but with a scheduled arrival of 07.43 at SVG I was quite relaxed, until we were held for five minutes after leaving Knebworth.
With further slow running we did not arrive at Stevenage until 07.53 – too tight for comfort. But in the event I did have enough time to walk down the platform to the First Class end of the train…
