Barbican BedPan / Thameslink question

[d7666]

In which timetable did northbound Moorgate -> Barbican -> Farringdon and north thereof BedPan and/or Thameslink passenger services cease to call at Barbican in that direction.

In the original electric Midland City (BedPan) timetables, the off peak half hourly SX and SO** all day departures from Moorgate - all stations to St.Albans, and all SX peak departures from Moorgate to any destination all called at Barbican.

At some point this ceased to be the case, with all inbound Moorgate branch arrivals all calling at Barbican but no outbound departures at all.

I think this asymmetry did not come in directly with start of re-opened Snow Hill tunnel and the Thameslink scheme, but followed a bit later, possibly when they had a larger 319 fleet and started using 8car 319s to/from Moorgate, because the northbound platform*** is (well was, as its closed now) only 4cars, and BedPan 317s had no SDO, nor do 319s.



** except for a few early morning SO trains that did not call Barbican in either direction; there was no normal Sunday service to Moorgate.

*** Barbican inbound was only 7 cars, the 8th (rear) car had what I can only call a ledge to stop someone dropping into the cess, and huge DO NOT ALIGHT HERE signs.


--
Nick

[Deleted]

May 3, 2013 21:36:28 GMT d7666 said:

In which timetable did northbound Moorgate -> Barbican -> Farringdon and north thereof BedPan and/or Thameslink passenger services cease to call at Barbican in that direction.

In the original electric Midland City (BedPan) timetables, the off peak half hourly SX and SO** all day departures from Moorgate - all stations to St.Albans, and all SX peak departures from Moorgate to any destination all called at Barbican.

At some point this ceased to be the case, with all inbound Moorgate branch arrivals all calling at Barbican but no outbound departures at all.

I think this asymmetry did not come in directly with start of re-opened Snow Hill tunnel and the Thameslink scheme, but followed a bit later, possibly when they had a larger 319 fleet and started using 8car 319s to/from Moorgate, because the northbound platform*** is (well was, as its closed now) only 4cars, and BedPan 317s had no SDO, nor do 319s.



** except for a few early morning SO trains that did not call Barbican in either direction; there was no normal Sunday service to Moorgate.

*** Barbican inbound was only 7 cars, the 8th (rear) car had what I can only call a ledge to stop someone dropping into the cess, and huge DO NOT ALIGHT HERE signs.


--
Nick

Nick, there were plenty of 8-car Bedpan trains ex-Moorgate before the TL project. Indeed, as a regular commuter from Farringdon (in the opposite direction to Crusty!) I was most certainly put out if only ONE four car 317 unit fronted up. I'm not sure when the "skip Barbican on the Down" began, but it was in place when I was commuting (1985-86) - and staring wistfully down towards Snow Hill and wondering "why not?"

[d7666]

Yes, thanks, I worked out the 8car bit after I dug out some notebooks.

Clearly an area of RAM had been reset wiping its contents

I asked the same question on another forum, and got this answer to my main query,

> Going by the BRPTT, until and including the Winter 1992/93 timetable all
> trains from Moorgate were shown as calling at Barbican. In the Summer 1993
> and Winter 1993-1994 timetables some ... trains are shown as
> calling in the evening peak to take up only, and from the Summer 1994
> timetable no calls are shown.

Between my original questions and getting that answer, I remembered some more myself, to save time I'll paste and edit what I wrote elsewhere :

I don't retain old timetables here, in general, but after the initial post I remembered for some reason I still have a 1987 LMR Midland Electric booklet here and wondered what it said about Barbican, and also looked up old BedPan moves into Moorgate - and found for SX peaks train I had all 8car there and no 4car. My grey cells are finally giving up so it seems.

And Hey Presto! from the booklet, quote
Barbican Station short platforms
On trains going towards Moorgate use only the front 7 coaches
On trains going from Moorgate use only the front 4 coaches

When I looked at the old moves it all came back. At that time I was working on digital PABX with 8 inch floppy disks. I recall several aborted upgrades at client sites in the City with failed to read disks at site, despite me proving and reproving them on every test rig we had in Luton and even taking the same drives from Luton to site. The common element to aborted jobs was always myself, it took a while to figure this one out, because we even did things like myself and colleagues taking duplicate disks to site, but we travelled together. We found the cause in the end - me being a traction crank I ensured we sat over the motor bogies on 317s into Moorgate, this damaged the disks, sitting elsewhere in the 317 was fine.


So all sorted out, excuse the "bad form" netiquette by answer my own question in here.

--
Nick

[Deleted]

May 4, 2013 10:17:39 GMT d7666 said:

Yes, thanks, I worked out the 8car bit after I dug out some notebooks.

<SNIP>
At that time I was working on digital PABX with 8 inch floppy disks. I recall several aborted upgrades at client sites in the City with failed to read disks at site, despite me proving and reproving them on every test rig we had in Luton and even taking the same drives from Luton to site. The common element to aborted jobs was always myself, it took a while to figure this one out, because we even did things like myself and colleagues taking duplicate disks to site, but we travelled together. We found the cause in the end - me being a traction crank I ensured we sat over the motor bogies on 317s into Moorgate, this damaged the disks, sitting elsewhere in the 317 was fine.


So all sorted out, excuse the "bad form" netiquette by answer my own question in here.

--
Nick

Interesting - I used the 317s regularly too, and had my office laptop with me. Never had a problem, but I never rode in the motor car - these had been the smoking cars traditionally in 4-car units and I habitually avoided them.

[d7666]

Floppy disks not hard disks.

And it was 8" disks too, we found (later) no problem with 3.5" disks.

I think it unlikely you had a portable computer with 8" floppy disks at all, so you would not have had the problem we had.

And this was 317s in original MSE service, not 319s, nor temporary periods of 317s back on the route, this was 1983-1988, and you had a laptop you could use on a train as long ago as that ? I know they existed of course, but they were hardly the norm among commuters.


--
Nick

[Deleted]

May 5, 2013 17:19:26 GMT d7666 said:

Floppy disks not hard disks.

And it was 8" disks too, we found (later) no problem with 3.5" disks.

I think it unlikely you had a portable computer with 8" floppy disks at all, so you would not have had the problem we had.

And this was 317s in original MSE service, not 319s, nor temporary periods of 317s back on the route, this was 1983-1988, and you had a laptop you could use on a train as long ago as that ? I know they existed of course, but they were hardly the norm among commuters.


--
Nick

Hi Nick ... Shame we never met up while commuting on the same route.

It was about 1985-ish onwards. A Toshiba 1100 to be precise. 286 (AT) technology, IIRC. And yes, 3.5" floppies, not the 5.25" really floppy floppies (and most certainly not 8"!!). Definitely 317 class on the route.

And more interestingly again, worked with a Cellnet engineer, driving around London uploading and downloading messages via a cellphone modem - as he tested timeout settings for the X25 data network interface. We deliberately were driving across cell boundaries to check how well the system managed the handovers. Didn't lose a single character!

My project was an e-mail<->International Telex service to allow UK international traders to gain access to the International Telex service via dial-up modem. This was espcially for those routes where either fax wasn't acceptable for business transactions, or the line quality was too poor for fax. So now we were looking at traders being able to telex from their Black Cab as it weaved around the streets of London. Not bad for 1985!