Why are the Cambrian line trains so often late?

Question

It seems like on many days there is some delay somewhere, not always much but usually a bit...

Answer 1

I've no idea what the line is like now, but I remember travelling on it on Summer Saturdays in the 1950s. If you think today's trains are late, you should have travelled then - crawling from signal to signal all the way from Welshpool to Machynellth. It was nothing to be 2 hours late or more into Barmouth.

Answer 2

perhaps if more people made the effort to get aboard the train 'before' departure!!!

Answer 3

It could be all the hills they have to climb.

Answer 4

Well d@dz has a good point - many times it is passengers (often with prams, bikes or ridiculously heavy luggage) who delay trains leaving stations on time.

But the root cause on the Cambrian Lines is that most of it is single track, with occasional passing loops. In addition it is signalled with a fairly old Radio Electronic Token technology, which keeps breaking down at the moment and which means that special 'tickets' have to be used, hand written at each passing loop, which causes several minutes of delay in the journey. Or the driver might need to use the rear cab of the train to get the token, so at every token exchange point this means walking back along the train to do the token, then back to the front. All adds up.

And with it being single line, if just ONE train gets delayed by say, 10 minutes, then it is 10 minutes late to the passing point, which means the train it passes then becomes 10 minutes late too. So you have two late trains for the price of one.

And if all that works ok, then there's the infamous Wolverhampton-Birmingham Bermuda Triangle, where trains go in and never seem to come out... mainly caused by regular track circuit or signal failures along that stretch of line, and sometimes caused by signallers at either place who route a freight or stopping train in front of the Cambrian service. A pity they seem to forget that the Cambrian line is single track and so the train they just delayed is now going to delay every single other train coming the other way, and so the whole timetable messes up for sometimes the entire day.

Hope this helps...