please empty your brain below
"plus an additional fact which helps explain why TfL have chosen not to put Battersea Park on the map"

What was said?

dg writes: He alerted us to the imminent train on the adjacent platform.

toby | 06.11.17 - 9:16 a.m. | #

To mark your publication, Battersea Park has a full Overground service this morning thanks to a broken rail near Clapham Junction. Thankfully I only needed Denmark Hill.

Alan Mc | 06.11.17 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Coincidentally, as of now (09:35), London Overground trains are serving Battersea Park due to a faulty track between Wandsworth Road and Clapham Junction.

Pedantic of Purley | 06.11.17 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Payg oyster doesn't know about it either and charges the wrong fare which is especially annoying when there's engineering work and all the trains terminate at Battersea Park.

Tony | 06.11.17 - 9:46 a.m. | #

I caught the 0722 departure one Sunday morning when other train services on the 'main lines' to/from Victoria were suspended due to 'improvement works'. As the gateline at Battersea Park was open a member of staff was keen to ensure I knew where I was going as I passed through to the platform.
I was the only passenger and enjoyed the views towards Wandsworth Road. It's a journey worth doing in the light.

Roger French | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 9:47 a.m. | #

I confirm that the 30 minute interval near pub closing time is a pain in the bladder if you're looking to travel home from a pub in Clapham Junction to Peckham Rye. You only make that mistake twice.

Lux | 06.11.17 - 11:37 a.m. | #

I took the 0618 once, just for the sake of it. It was considerably anti-climatic.

Panceltic | 06.11.17 - 12:39 p.m. | #

> …the connecting spur still needs to be kept open, and drivers still need to know how to use it, so a parliamentary train service is run…

Is there still a legal requirement to run a daily/weekly “parliamentary train” on TfL or indeed other UK rail lines? Obviously, franchises agree to provide regular services of certain frequencies on their lines, but it seems unlikely that a modern contract would bother to require one train a day. But Victorian acts of parliament still affect legal rights along many lines. So is the term now only an anachronistic description of trains voluntarily timetabled for logistical purposes, or are some infrequent trains timetabled for regulatory reasons?

Rich G | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 1:06 p.m. | #

Network Rail still have to go through a formal closure procedure if all passenger services are to be withdrawn from a stretch of line. It is easier just to keep a skeleton service going, which also allows drivers to maintain their route knowledge if the line is needed for emergency use (as it is this morning).

The train that came to grief at Wimbledon early this morning is another such service - running from Wimbledon to Clapham Junction via East Putney

timbo | 06.11.17 - 1:52 p.m. | #

I wondered what the derailed train was doing there when I saw it but assumed it was an empty stock movement

David | 06.11.17 - 2:22 p.m. | #

The Wimbledon to East Putney section of the District Line is regularly used by South Western trains for post-peak empty stock movements to and from Wimbledon depot but I didn't realise it still had a timetabled 'parliamentary' service

Jeremy | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 2:55 p.m. | #

I found myself on that service not so long ago. Given how slowly the regular trains go between Wandsworth Road and Clapham Junction, and the swift arrival of a Southern train at Battersea Park, I wonder if it isn't actually quicker than the 'direct' route. Has anyone timed it?

Jonathan Wadman | 06.11.17 - 3:53 p.m. | #

The line between East Putney and Wimbledon remained in BR control until the early 90s and there are still vestiges of NSE branding at the intermediate stations.

I think the signalling along there is still Network Rail's (so as not to confuse mainline drivers unfamiliar with tube signalling - District drivers are fine with mainline signals anyway because of Richmond).

None | 06.11.17 - 4:12 p.m. | #

timbo: Network Rail still have to go through a formal closure procedure if all passenger services are to be withdrawn from a stretch of line.

Thanks. It does seems like a bad loophole if solitary trains can be used to defeat a proper consultation. I suppose a nugatory service at least avoids the deadweight cost of reopening a disused branch, but that needn’t require a rule affecting the public timetable. Surely regulators would by now have introduced a more nuanced service threshold so as not to bring the notion into disrepute. As DG’s post shows, these trains cause real confusion (and in more rural places, weekly “parliamentary” visits must be more of an insult than a comfort to those communities that notionally benefit).

So I’m left wondering whether timetablers still have their hands tied by old parliamentary acts or whether the closure procedure is a modern regulation, either thoughtlessly retained or reinvented for some ulterior purpose.

Rich G | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 4:12 p.m. | #

The Pasengers Services over unusual lines (PSUL) website http://www.psul4all.free-online.co.uk/2017.htm lists five weekday services over the Wimbledon-East Putney- Point Pleasant route
0042 Waterloo - Strawberry Hill
0105 Waterloo - Basingstoke
0454 Basingstoke - Waterloo
2254 Basingstoke - Waterloo
2312 Waterloo - Southampton Central

It was the 0454 which cane to grief this morning.

The route saw extensive use during the August shutdown.

The Overground services to/from Battersea Park are listed too (as Battersea Park- Factory Junction)

timbo | 06.11.17 - 4:19 p.m. | #

They are all terminating at Battersea Park today because of emergency engineering work today!

Tony | 06.11.17 - 7:12 p.m. | #

Of course the most special Overground train was the Saturday morning 0530 Liverpool Street to Enfield train. Unfortunately it has been diverted away from South Tottenham for the rest of the year and appears to be permanently thus in the new timetable.

Wolf | 06.11.17 - 8:03 p.m. | #

Should the train have been signed as going to Wandsworth Road until its penultimate stop? Then people could have seen where it was going on a map.

How many people who switched platforms at Battersea Park were just doing what their phone told them to do to get home? A win for the apps/journey planner?

Philip | 06.11.17 - 8:06 p.m. | #

Depends what you mean by "old parliamentary acts" and "modern regulations". There was the 1844 version, which has been repealed, and the Transport Act 1962 version, which is a different rule for a different purpose, but the name "parliamentary train" has been recycled. Is something dating from 1962 "old"?

Malcolm | 06.11.17 - 10:05 p.m. | #

@ Malcolm

Hmm, as far as I can see the closure provisions now in force would be the Railways Act 2005, which replaced the 1993 provisions which effectively replaced the 1962 provisions. It seems that the concept of “parliamentary train” changed after the Railway Regulation Act 1844 was repealed, from a statutory daily service (“once at the least each way on every week day, except Christmas Day and Good Friday”) to the more general requirement for a ministerial/ORR closure order if lines or stations ceased to be in use. Anyway, by the 1960s legislators ought to have been well aware of the confusion and annoyance created by timetabling of very infrequent trains. Perhaps it suits the government as much as rail operators to obfuscate the effective ending of useful services.

Rich G | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 11:34 p.m. | #

Some of these very infrequent trains inspire joy, as you'll know if you watched the All The Stations team visit Shippea Hill, Teesside Airport, Reddish South, Breich, Pilning, Bordesley, etc etc.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 06.11.17 - 11:46 p.m. | #

@ DG

What is this thing you earthlings call “joy”? :)

Granted, but then how many more-conventional travellers have their personal safety put at risk by finding that their usual late-night service ends up somewhere unexpected (or has an unusual destination indicator that leads people to not board a train that would, in fact, call at their usual intermediate station)? If people need obscure trains to play games with, let the trains be even more obscure by being supplementary to the public timetable not instead of it!

Rich G | Homepage | 07.11.17 - 12:03 a.m. | #

Yes, but requiring palavers if something ceases to be in use requires a definition of "being in use". Currently this is at least one train per week, but it could be altered to one a year, two per day, or whatever. Such a change is probably not going to happen, because why bother?

Malcolm | 07.11.17 - 3:04 a.m. | #

@ Malcolm

That’s the nub of it – though I can’t see any statutory definition of “in use”, so either there was a court case that defined the threshold or everyone is just using weekly as a reasonable interpretation, being more cautious than assuming a yearly minimum but less cautious than assuming that regulators require a genuinely useful service. (The establishment of a right of way can be thwarted by blocking a highway just once a year; and I think some defunct or renamed newspapers used to publish posthumous editions once a year to retain certain rights.)

Rich G | Homepage | 07.11.17 - 9:07 a.m. | #

In all this talk of legalities, don't forget that railway companies sometimes want these links still open as they have uses.

The Parliamentary Chiltern service from Paddington may mostly exist for legal reasons, but it's useful for Chiltern as a diversionary route. See also yesterday's reports of all trains going to Battersea Park.

Generally you can tell how "useful" a service is to the operator by how many trains there are running - if it's there's more than one a week, you can bet it's not just running for legal reasons.

(n.b. that applies to routes kept open, rather than just particular stations)

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 07.11.17 - 9:57 a.m. | #

The original "Parliamentary Trains" were introduced under the Railway Regulation Act 1844, which required "the provision of at least one train a day each way at a speed of not less than 12 miles an hour including stops, which were to be made at all stations, and of carriages protected from the weather and provided with seats; for all which luxuries not more than a penny a mile might be charged".

That particular bit of legislation has since been repealed, and the term "appropriated" to describe the modern limited services instead.

Barry S | 07.11.17 - 10:08 a.m. | #

There is also an early morning SouthEastern train from Victoria to Bromley South which calls at Wandsworth Road and Clapham High Street.

Kim | 07.11.17 - 12:35 p.m. | #

In a wonderful moment of serendipity, due to a broken rail all OG trains that normally go to Clapham and running to Battersea Park today throughout the whole day. Go now, for your chance to do it in daylight.

dg writes: This is so brilliant that you are the fourth person to mention it :)

Geofftech | 07.11.17 - 1:55 p.m. | #

Having been through platforms 1 & 2 at Battersea Par in the days before the line was cut short there and platform 1 closed, I think that I may have ended up there on a LO train during some engineering works. If I'd been around, I may have gone for another visit yesterday.

The Wimbledon - East Putney link is also useful during disruptions. A train I was on for Clapham Junction was diverted there a while back due to a one-under on the local at Earlsfield.

Rogmi | Homepage | 08.11.17 - 11:13 a.m. | #











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