Understanding old timetables

[Jeremy Cumberland]

4 minutes ago, caradoc said:

SC is indeed a slip coach at Luton - The note bottom right of the timetable page refers !

Ah yes, I missed that. Since it arrives at 8:30, the next column must be a connecting service, rather than the slip coach itself being hauled onwards.

[Nick Holliday]

4 hours ago, Jeremy C said:

As others have said, the 05:50 from Derby to Leicester is a stopping service via Trent. Comparing how the Nottingham times are printed with, for example, Cambridge (which definitely refers to connecting services), I think that both Nottingham times are connections rather than portions of the same train, but the Nottingham to Trent timetable should give more information.

 

The service to St Pancras in the next column begins from Nottingham at 06:35, except on Saturdays when it begins at Leicester (the 3 minutes at Leicester is impossibly tight for a connecting service), and calls at Loughborough (SX), Leicester, Kettering, Wellingborough and Bedford. You will need to check the notes to see what LP and SC refer to, but SC could be a slip coach, and appears to be described in the following column, being slipped at Luton and then hauled onwards to Harpenden and St Albans.

 

Always ignore anything in the same column beyond a double line. Double lines were used to put several trains in the same column.

 

The LP indicates that the train stops to pick up only London passengers.  This appears to be at Kegworth, but I would have thought a passenger might be rather brave to take this option, given that they can change fairly comfortably at Leicester.

[JohnClarkson]

Thank you everyone. To sum up then, let's imagine I went back in time to July 5th 1915. (I have found out this timetable applies to that date). I board the train at Derby at 5.50am. This stops at Trent. Then it carries on to Leicester without stopping  Here I change for St Pancras and there are no stops on this second connecting train. (A SC occurs at Luton). As long as I sit far enough away from that I can be in London by 9.20am baring no delays.

 

Would the above adequately describe the journey or have I missed any other stops out please?

 

[Nick Holliday]

5 hours ago, JohnClarkson said:

Thank you everyone. To sum up then, let's imagine I went back in time to July 5th 1915. (I have found out this timetable applies to that date). I board the train at Derby at 5.50am. This stops at Trent. Then it carries on to Leicester without stopping  Here I change for St Pancras and there are no stops on this second connecting train. (A SC occurs at Luton). As long as I sit far enough away from that I can be in London by 9.20am baring no delays.

 

Would the above adequately describe the journey or have I missed any other stops out please?

 

I think your Derby train stops at all stations to Leicester.

The St. Pancras train appears to stop at Kettering at 7:50, Wellingborough at 8:00 and Bedford at 8.22, before slipping coaches for Luton and arriving at St. Pancras at 9:20.

[Aire Head]

5 hours ago, JohnClarkson said:

I board the train at Derby at 5.50am. This stops at Trent. Then it carries on to Leicester without stopping

 

The 5:50 from Derby stops at every station on the way to Leicester.

[JohnClarkson]

Okay, so you think that it stops at every station on the way to Leicester. I understand. Thank you.

[JohnClarkson]

And the second train stops at Kettering, Wellingborough and Bedford, and SC at Luton. Excellent. Thank you all for this. It makes a lot more sense now.

[john new]

17 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

The LP indicates that the train stops to pick up only London passengers.  This appears to be at Kegworth, but I would have thought a passenger might be rather brave to take this option, given that they can change fairly comfortably at Leicester.

Where did that one start from though? I see Nottingham 06:35 may well be a connecting train time (italicised), the London express misses out a Trent stop so does Kegworth instead for London p/up only. Logically it came down the Erewash valley route.  Kegworth is north of Leicester, change there more chance of a seat onwards for London. In the footnote it only mentions the 7:18 from Leicester, implication the Luton coach(es) were only added at Leicester, but with LP boarding at Kegworth the train, or at least some portion of it, originated north thereof.
 

Did the Midland actually slip the coaches on the move or would the Luton portion have been detached and hauled forward? Just curious, I knew the GW slipped on the move but not others.

 

An interesting puzzle.

Edited February 10, 2022 by john new

[bécasse]

The use of an italic font for connecting times is a (comparatively) recent innovation, I suspect coincident with the introduction of timings in 24-hour clock format in the mid-1960s. Although prior to that the various regional books all contained their own idiosyncrasies that were inherited from the big-four companies (and sometimes even the pre-grouping companies) and which tended to be prolonged by the fact that the several printing companies involved held the winter and summer editions of the passenger (and often the working) timetables as standing print which were merely updated and not reset each time. (There was an obvious cost to this but that cost was not only lower than the cost of full print-setting but was less susceptible to the propagation of errors.)

 

Without a copy of the full timetable in front of me it is difficult to speculate accurately but I suspect that the Midland were using an italic font to indicate that the train concerned either didn't run every day or was subject to some other sort of restriction.

[Nick Holliday]

1 hour ago, john new said:

Where did that one start from though? I see Nottingham 06:35 may well be a connecting train time (italicised), the London express misses out a Trent stop so does Kegworth instead for London p/up only. Logically it came down the Erewash valley route.  Kegworth is north of Leicester, change there more chance of a seat onwards for London. In the footnote it only mentions the 7:18 from Leicester, implication the Luton coach(es) were only added at Leicester, but with LP boarding at Kegworth the train, or at least some portion of it, originated north thereof.
 

Did the Midland actually slip the coaches on the move or would the Luton portion have been detached and hauled forward? Just curious, I knew the GW slipped on the move but not others.

 

An interesting puzzle.

According to C E J Fryer the Midland certainly slipped coaches on the move, at one time at 17 locations.  Luton had one slip in 1903, two in 1910 and three in 1914.  One of the last three was interesting, as the slip portion had earlier been slipped at Wellingborough and then added to a train to be then slipped at Luton 35 miles further on.

[Nick Holliday]

1 hour ago, bécasse said:

The use of an italic font for connecting times is a (comparatively) recent innovation, I suspect coincident with the introduction of timings in 24-hour clock format in the mid-1960s. Although prior to that the various regional books all contained their own idiosyncrasies that were inherited from the big-four companies (and sometimes even the pre-grouping companies) and which tended to be prolonged by the fact that the several printing companies involved held the winter and summer editions of the passenger (and often the working) timetables as standing print which were merely updated and not reset each time. (There was an obvious cost to this but that cost was not only lower than the cost of full print-setting but was less susceptible to the propagation of errors.)

 

Without a copy of the full timetable in front of me it is difficult to speculate accurately but I suspect that the Midland were using an italic font to indicate that the train concerned either didn't run every day or was subject to some other sort of restriction.

The LSWR used a similar convention of italics for non-daily services, but the LBSCR, by 1912, used italics to denote that the service was operated using railmotors!  Certainly, a fuller copy of the Midland timetable under discussion would be very useful.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

The use of an italic font for connecting times is a (comparatively) recent innovation, I suspect coincident with the introduction of timings in 24-hour clock format in the mid-1960s. Although prior to that the various regional books all contained their own idiosyncrasies that were inherited from the big-four companies (and sometimes even the pre-grouping companies) and which tended to be prolonged by the fact that the several printing companies involved held the winter and summer editions of the passenger (and often the working) timetables as standing print which were merely updated and not reset each time. (There was an obvious cost to this but that cost was not only lower than the cost of full print-setting but was less susceptible to the propagation of errors.)

 

Without a copy of the full timetable in front of me it is difficult to speculate accurately but I suspect that the Midland were using an italic font to indicate that the train concerned either didn't run every day or was subject to some other sort of restriction.

Looking at my  most immediately to hand public timetables I can confirm that while italics do not appear to have been used in the 1850 timetable covering the GWR, B&E, Cornwall,  and various other associated railways they are very definitely present in some connecting times in the GWR 1929 Summer and winter public books.  When I get a chance I'll look and see if that appeared in the GWR 1875 book but it is one that needs a bit of work to access from its storage place.  However italics were definitely not used to simply indicate connecting trains running throughout the whole currency of the 1929 timetable but seem to refer only to dated connections.

[bécasse]

In the British Railways era, the traditional-style Southern Region books (pre mid-1960s) definitely showed connections in the same font as other timings, just as this MR book appears to do so. Unless there was a definitive note ("through carriages" or "change at") one had to guess that a timing was a connection.

Edited February 10, 2022 by bécasse

[kevinlms]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach

 

The London & Blackwall Railway was particularly exciting!