Terms Glossary

This site shows the railway's own timetable, which uses the railway's own words. These are the ones it prints.

Headcode

The four characters identifying a train that day, like 1Y44. The first digit is the kind of train, the letter is roughly where it is going, and the last two numbers separate it from others like it. It is a WORKING rather than a train: the same code comes round every day, several trains can carry it, and after a diversion the same one can appear twice in an afternoon.

Expected

When the train will actually be here. Bold means the train reported it; italic means nothing has been reported yet and this is the booked time shifted by the delay it is carrying.

Starts here

The train begins its journey at this station, so there is no earlier part of it to have come from.

Timing point

A place trains pass rather than call at: a junction, a signal box, the end of a siding. It has a name and a code and no platform, so a board for one is empty by definition.

All services

The detailed board: everything that goes through, including trains that pass without stopping, freight, and empty stock. Stopping Services shows only what a passenger can board.

GBTT

The Great Britain Timetable: the PUBLIC times, the ones printed in a timetable and shown on a station screen. Always a whole minute.

WTT

The Working Timetable: the times the railway runs to, which are not always the ones it advertises. A train may be booked to arrive half a minute before it is advertised to, and it holds times for places with no public times at all.

pass

The train goes through here without stopping. A pass is one event rather than an arrival and a departure, so it shows one time.

No report

The train has definitely gone past here, and nothing was reported for it. Not the same as a train that has not reached it yet.

Line and Path

Which running line the train is booked over and which path it is booked into. DN is the down main, DF the down fast. Blank means the schedule does not say.

Allowance

Slack the planner built into the schedule. ENGINEERING allowance is time for the state of the track, PATHING allowance is time for fitting between other trains, and PERFORMANCE allowance is recovery padding. They are kept apart because they answer different questions.

Pathed as

What the schedule was timed for, which is not always what turns up: "pathed as diesel at 100mph" means the path was planned around a diesel doing a hundred, whatever actually works it.

STP

Short Term Planning, and it says which timetable a train comes from. PERMANENT is the timetable planned months ahead; OVERLAY is a change made to it; NEW STP is a train created at short notice; CANCELLATION removes one. Where two disagree, the short-notice one wins.

VSTP

Very Short Term Plan: trains created or cancelled too late for the nightly timetable, which is most freight and anything arranged on the day.

UID

The identifier for one schedule, like C24608. Unlike a headcode it means exactly one train on one date, which is why the address of a train page uses it.

TIPLOC

Timing Point Location: the railway's own code for a place, like WATRLMN. There are 12,071 of them and most are not stations. A station usually has a shorter CRS code as well, like WAT.

CRS

The three-letter station code you see on a ticket: YRK, KGX, EDB.

Unit

A fixed set of carriages that works as one vehicle, like 185121. A train can be one unit or several coupled together, and units join and split during a journey.

Diagram

The day's work a unit is rostered to do, as a plan: one diagram is a chain of trains a set works in turn.

Consist

What a train is actually made of on the day, vehicle by vehicle, as reported by the operator rather than planned.