London Underground ceases timetables

Late last year, when previous Metropolitan timetables expired, London Underground didn’t publish its only remaining booklets (those for Amersham/Chesham and Watford). LU gave the impression this was a temporary measure and that publication would resume in May, but I guessed that was an excuse and that it had no intention of doing so.

Posters now say they can be downloaded from the internet, but they’re in an entirely unsuitable format for printing. Indeed, what nonsense that LU can take the trouble to produce them, but not bother printing them.

For Amersham & Chesham it really matters, as the Chiltern Railways service from Marylebone forms an essential part of the overall service. People take conscious decisions as to whether they go to Baker Street or to Marylebone. Both are half-hourly to Amersham, but the latter is faster than the Tube and also offers connections to Chesham.

Chiltern shows only its own trains in its timetable, so there is now nothing that allows people to plan - aside, of course, from LU’s awful online journey planner which just can’t cope with choices requiring journeys to/from different termini.

I have downloaded and printed the offpeak hour pages to take with me, but that’s only suitable as I’m not there in the peaks. Why is LU allowed by the Mayor to treat its users with such contempt?

Next, further north, in my National Rail Timetable review ( RAIL 829) for Table 103, I said that after several consecutive summer timetables containing an error regarding Southport-Liverpool trains, at last the NRT has it right on Sundays - showing the frequency as every 15 minutes, as on MonSat, until September 24.

Amazingly, this turns out to be the first summer for many years when Merseyrail has delayed changing the frequency! Trains continue to run every 30 minutes on Sundays until “mid-July”.

Yes, can you believe that is what Merseyrail actually says on its website? No date, just “mid-July”. How sloppy some operators are. I wouldn’t have expected this from a respected operator like Merseyrail.

After some digging, I have found that services will run every 15 minutes on Sundays from July 23 to September 24.

Finally, for Table 239 I said that until September 24 the usual second train from/to Kyle of Lochalsh runs at 1010 from Kyle, returning from Dingwall at 1833. I should have made clear that is Sundays only.