{"id":247,"date":"2022-04-01T16:04:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T16:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/?p=247"},"modified":"2022-11-16T17:07:34","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T17:07:34","slug":"train-companies-tried-to-run-trains-back-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/2022\/04\/01\/train-companies-tried-to-run-trains-back-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Train companies tried to run trains back in time!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Multiple train companies attempted to run their trains back in time last week, including a Thameslink train which took -55m (negative 55 minutes) from Gatwick Airport to the next station Three Bridges, departing 02:58 and arriving 02:03:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Or a South Western Railway train from Woking to Basingstoke taking -33m (negative 33 minutes), departing 02:49 and arriving 02:16 on the same day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Or a rail replacement bus departing 02:31 at Eastleigh, arriving 02:03 at Totton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’m telling an April Fools’ Day joke, right? But the trains which ran back in time were not on today! They were on last Sunday, 27 March!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what happened to the trains then? As obviously running back in time is impossible, they all suffered from an hour delay on that day (courtesy to Realtime Trains<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The train departed Gatwick Airport at 02:58 was actually scheduled at 01:58, so the journey planner guessed the delay correctly when departing, but failed to apply the same delay when arriving Three Bridges with actual arrival 03:03.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the train departed Woking at 02:49 were similarly scheduled at 01:49 in the internal system as well, and suffered from 57 minutes of delay upon its final destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That’s because train companies tried to schedule trains to run at a non-existent local time! The United Kingdom has inherited the old-fashioned and annoying practice of changing its time zone twice per year which causes extra traffic accidents, switching from UTC to UTC+1 at 01:00 the last Sunday of March, causing the local time to skip from 01:00 to 02:00, and UTC+1 back to UTC at 01:00 the last Sunday of October, causing the local time to roll back from 02:00 to 01:00. Because railway scheduling is done on local time, and the local time 01:58 didn’t exist on that day, computer systems which tried to process that time would instead treat the time as 02:58 local time resulting in trains running back in time which is physically impossible. And on the ground, because the local time 01:58 didn’t physically exist as well so trains couldn’t physically depart on time and had to suffer a “delay”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This really showed that these train companies are incompetent that they couldn’t even produce a schedule which can be run in reality, as such impossible schedules can easily be checked by running a program on the timetable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multiple train companies attempted to run their trains back in time last week, including a Thameslink train which took -55m (negative 55 minutes) from Gatwick Airport to the next station Three Bridges, departing 02:58 and arriving 02:03: Or a South Western Railway…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[41,42,43],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-applications","tag-bug","tag-time","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miklcct.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}