Manually-controlled barrier level crossing on the East Coast route (ELR ECM1).
| 00:32 | 1E30 | 🚄 | EDINBUR → KNGX | → from Grantham | -1 min |
On today’s timetable, Helpston crossing is predicted to be closed for about 11 h 46 min between 06:00 and 22:00, across roughly 104 closures. The longest single predicted closure is 19 minutes. Freight paths scheduled “as required” — most don’t run on any given day — aren’t counted here; when one does run, the live timeline above shows it.
Longest closure so far today: 4.4 min (23:58–00:02, 1 train), timed from trains actually seen on the signalling wire — the window edges use the same per-type margins as the forecast, since barrier positions aren't in any feed we can read.
Closures cluster around 08:47–09:47 in the morning and around 12:06–13:06 in the middle of the day. Gaps between closures are longest outside those windows. Other days run a different timetable, so the peaks move.
Helpston is a manually-controlled barrier crossing (MCB/MB) on the Peterborough North Yd GBRf–Grantham line (East Coast route · ELR ECM1). A signaller monitors the crossing, confirms it is clear, and lowers the barriers ahead of each train. Forecasts here combine the working timetable with live train-movement data (and live signalling where the crossing has it), so they reflect actual running including delays and freight — though they can still be wrong when the network is disrupted.
We score this page against what actually happened on the railway — over the last 7 days that covered 16 trains through this crossing.
100.0% of observed passes were being warned about on this page when they passed, and 95.2% of the warnings we could verify came true.
Typical timing error was ±82s (9 in 10 within 236s). This scores when trains pass — barrier movements aren't in the public feeds we can score against.