Interpreting London Commuter Service Ids

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by Pizzicato, Dec 28, 2021.

  1. Pizzicato

    Pizzicato New Member

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    Hey all,

    Are the ID's for a given service meaningful in the sense of providing any information to the player? In the Capital to Coast scenarios, for example, there's:
    • 1A29 Brighton to London Victoria
    • 1M15 Brighton to London Victoria
    Do the 1A29 or 1M15 IDs allow me to infer anything about the services as a means of differentiating them?
     
  2. Nozomi329

    Nozomi329 Member

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    Not an expert on this but they're called headcode or train reporting number. Here's the wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_reporting_number
    Basically the first digit is the priority level, 1 being the highest. The second digit is the destination, usually specific to certain lines or regions.
     
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  3. solicitr

    solicitr Well-Known Member

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    With freight services, the first digit also indicates the maximum allowable speed (4 is 75 mph, 6 is 60, 7 is 45)
     
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  4. Pizzicato

    Pizzicato New Member

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    Good info. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, guys.
     
  5. Joethefish

    Joethefish Staff Member

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    I thought about writing up a list of the routes that each headcode runs, but never got round to it. I'll do it tomorrow if I remember. Should make searching them easier in menu. But for now...

    1A - Class 1 London Victoria to Brighton/Brighton to London Victoria Southern service.

    1M - Class 1 Brighton to London Victoria Gatwick Express service, the code in the other direction is 1W.
     
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  6. raretrack

    raretrack Well-Known Member

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    The GB working timetables used to be published online for all to see, but now you have to register to receive them.

    But as an example, see this timetable from 2016 for area WE, covering East Croydon to Brighton. There's a table at the beginning that explains all of the codes.
     
  7. Joethefish

    Joethefish Staff Member

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  8. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    It breaks down into:
    1st digit - "train class", so in the case of 1 that's a passenger express, 2 a passenger non-express, 9 passenger "special" or new route (the new Thameslink services are all 9 prefix) and so on, so basically an indicator of how often those services stop
    As solicitr says above the freight headcodes show the max consist speed for the train, the higher the number the LOWER the max speed. I believe 4 is 75mph for example (high speed multimodal basically), then 6, 7 & 8 are 60,45 and 35mph respectively
    There are also 0 (light engine moves) and 5 (empty stock moves) prefixes. A special headcode is 1Z99 which is basically an emergency train, either a snow plough, rescue train (to rescue a failed train) or something like a train to clear the line of some other obstacle.

    2nd digit (always a letter for passengers) - This is the LOCAL route designator... basically where the train is going to start and end at, but I say local, because there are obviously more than 26 places in the UK a train can start or terminate at, but in essence all trains to and from Victoria would use a selection of letters, all trains to and from Brighton may use a different selection, all trains to and from Manchester Piccadilly etc etc. This does mean that there are going to be multiple services with the same headcode on the same day, but I imagine they wouldn't be going from or to the same place
    All of the below are running weekdays according to realtimetrains.co.uk
    • 1A29 Harrogate to London Kings Cross
    • 1A29 London Waterloo to Alton
    • 1A29 Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington
    • 1A29 Manchester Picadilly to London Euston
    The letter can also indicate a freight yard for freights, so 6N45 from Drax power station to Tyne Coal terminal, or 6M94 from Thrislington Gbrf terminal to Toton North Yard

    The last two digits are a "running number", so where there are loads of services between two points in a day these are general sequential (so in the case of Waterloo to Alton there are five a day, starting at 1A19, with the return being 1A20, the next service 1A21 and so on up to 1A23)

    An added fillip is that often the empty stock moves that go into service from a main station have the same headcode but starting with a 5, so for example the ECS from Wimbledon Park depot sidings to Waterloo which forms the 2C07 train to Reading has the headcode 5C07 out of Wimbledon
     
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