I happened to be watching yesterday and it was a bit of a carve up, possibly not helped by poor foresight by signal operators.
The on time Norwich to Liverpool (1R66) was allowed onto the two-track section at Tallington just ahead of the late running KGX to Hull (1H02), which as a 90 mph DMU further delayed 1H02. 1R66 has a brief wait outside Grantham due to a late running EMR Skegness to Nottingham, further delaying 1H02, by which time 1W11 was right behind all the way to Retford. But unbelievably, 1H02 was allowed back onto the main line in front of 1W11 from the loop platform whilst 1W11 had to wait on the mainline. The same happened at Doncaster too, so obviously 1W11 picked up more and more delays.
Two points:
- No room for error at all in the scheduling/allocation as per the original point
- Why on earth would a late running train be given priority over other services, impacting on them, or at least some initiative shown to minimise the disruption?