West of England timetable and regulation investigation

The West of England (WoE) route starts from Waterloo station and continues towards Exeter St. Davids offering passenger services to Basingstoke and Salisbury. The section from Salisbury to Exeter St. Davids is built mostly as a single track line with passing loops.

The focus of this study was to model the effects of late running combination of trains in the West of England route in order to understand the best regulations strategies to reduce the total delay. Microscopic simulations using trenissimo were conducted to evaluate the effects of late running trains. To each train of the WoE route was applied a lateness at origin using 3 minutes intervals up to a maximum of 30 minutes to evaluate the delay propagation between the two directions of the single track section.

Simulations used different regulation strategies to handle train priorities on the single track line. They were defined as follows:

• First come, first served.
• Least late train is always given priority up to an agreed threshold.
• Most late train is always given priority up to an agreed threshold.
• Prioritise Up direction up to an agreed threshold.
• Prioritise Down direction up to an agreed threshold.