Main Line

I'm looking at a Summer 1982 WTT which shows two loco hauled services south from Barnstaple on weekdays (2B64 at 07:13 and 2B79 at 2202), all the northbound services are however shown as DMU worked and there is no 0300 mail train from Exeter (which would in other years formed the 07:13 back. There are no other trains which could possibly form the 0713 so Is this likely to be an error or would some trains have deliberately been left out of the WTT? I also note that there's no return working from Barnstaple showing a DMU with a tail load permitted for the newspapers van to return (an afternoon departure would be reasonable for this since the only way it seems that it could get back to Paddington would be via 3S15 1210 Penzance to Glasgow Parcels and 3A08 Bristol to Paddington Premium Parcels.

This is what I'm not so sure about, since I remember travelling on slam door stock on the services which were first stop Romford for quite a few years after the Southends had gone over to 321 operation. I'm not entirely sure but I believe the fast trains calling at Romford back then went to either Braintree or Colchester Town. In early 1994 I moved away from the area but still visited at least once a year, spring/summer of that year was the last time I remember travelling on slam door stock though, from my next visit onwards (which was in spring 1995), I only ever remember 321s. I notice some reference on wikipedia to 11 321/4s being transferred to the GE although I can't find any dates for this. This may well explain it if the 317s released by the 365s around 1995 allowed 321s to be displaced from West Anglia onto the Great Eastern allowing the removal of the last slam door stock from services which stopped at Romford.

I remember around the start of the 1990s the Southend services went over to 321 operation but after that I still remember for quite a few years travelling between Liverpool Street and Romford on slam door stock (usually a Braintree or Colchester Town service). From around 1995 though these services went over 321 operation and slam door stock I believe then only appeared on certain peak workings. There was no second order of 321s for the GE so were extra 321s cascaded from elsewhere?

Thanks for this detailed posting, that is exactly the situation I had read about existing before 1992. This may well also explain the situation at Exeter Central (branded NSE but went to RR in 1992) since if all staff were then directly employed by a specific sector then it would not have fit well for NSE to have a distanct outpost which required platform staff when the next staffed platform heading east I believe would have been Salisbury.

That's certainly how it was after the 1992 restructuring but I have read quite a few times that it wasn't the case before that.

Two years before privatisation, the regions were abolished and all infrastructure and operations became the direct responsibility of the sectors. What I'm not so clear on though is the period before this (starting in 1982) where a "matrix" structure was in place. The trains were branded according to sector and no doubt the cost of any new trains would have to come out of the sector budget (I guess fare revenue would have been split among the sectors according to journeys made). Was the day to day operation of the stations/trains/signal boxes and so on still the domain of the regions back then (despite any branding) with the various sectors contracting the regions to provide the service?

The timetable in question is dated September 1949 and has all of the Summer Saturday services marked as suspended and in some cases dates are specified at the top of the column. Considering the timetable would have started at the end of the summer period I was wondering if it was the case that the trains were simply suspended until the next summer if no Summer Saturday trains ran at all until later in the 1950s.

I've noticed that in some old GWR/WR service timetables trains are marked suspended (including most of the summer Saturday holiday trains to the west). Does this mean that the train definitely did not run at all during the period of that timetable (but the path was retained) or would an order have been given on a specific day for the train to run?