After reading another thread about timetable scenarios and people's experience of being stuck behind freight trains it got me thinking, what does have priority on the uk railways, is it freight or intercity passenger runs?
You can tell by the headcode 0 - light loco or loco convoy. Could be given a higher priority but normally lower than any passenger train 1 - express passenger, almost always priority 2 - standard passenger, less priority than a 1 but higher than most others 3 - Priority empty stock, parcels or RHTT - higher priority than freight, lower than passenger 4 - high speed freight - almost always multimodal - up to 75mph 5 - standard ECS - empty stock movement, no special priority 6 - standard freight - limited to 60mph maximum 7 - slow / heavy freight - limited to 45mph max 8 - very slow freight (30mph) or weather related RHTT / treatment trains (slower than 3xxx) 9 - special / additional services. High speed services such as Channel tunnel etc, Thameslink and London Overground use these as they cross multiple route boundaries so get different priorities (or they ran out of numbers) so in general the priority is 1,(9),2,(9),3,4,5,6,0,7,8 the two nines depend on the priority at that point in the service
