Why do trains in the UK start running so late on Sunday morning?

5/16/2017 12:20:21 PM

Since the question was “why”, historically in the UK, driver’s salaries were quite low, and British Rail ran the Sunday service on an overtime-only basis[1]. That is, only drivers who volunteered (for significant overtime pay) would drive trains on a Sunday. I believe this was similar for other grades of staff.

For this reason, British Rail would only timetable services where they could expect enough volunteers to make it viable to run it on a regular basis.

Nowadays, as many people know, drivers’ salaries have gone up massively with privatisation, and in return some Train Operators in the UK have started making Sundays part of the official working week, and no longer voluntary. But the old timetables from the British Rail era often remain relatively unaltered, as many of these Sunday services are loss-making, and the government has not mandated an increase in most cases.

Another reason is that major engineering work is often done on a Sunday, so the timetable is quite often geared towards having long stretches of the railway reduced in capacity (eg down to one track from two, or two tracks from four or six), and so reducing the impact of such work on the number of trains that can be run.

In some new franchises a much better Sunday service is being mandated, eg the new South Western franchise. It remains to be seen whether this will be a common element among new franchises or just reserved for the ones seen as important by the government…

[1] http://www.traindriver.org/what-the-job-involves.html

5/15/2017 11:27:58 PM

Trains in the UK are run by private rail franchises who make commercial judgments on when to schedule trains to run on particular lines.

This means that for a line like the Furness line that may have low passenger traffic numbers earlier in the morning on a Sunday the company has decided it is not economically viable to run trains earlier than 11.24.

Other busier lines such as ones into and out of London have trains that start at 05.45 for example.

The various rail franchise holders also have certain service commitments placed on the by the Government when they are awarded the franchises and these vary from franchise to franchise.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

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Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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