What is a timetable?

• A. The official schedule listing departure and arrival times, routes, and service frequencies
• B. The time for a train to travel from its origin to its destination
• C. The movement of trains or equipment without passengers
• D. The time a train remains at a station

Answer: (A)

A timetable is the published plan that shows when trains are scheduled to run, where they stop, and how often they operate. It lists departure times from each station, arrival times, the routes or lines served, and the frequency of service, often across days of the week. This official schedule is what passengers use to plan trips and what rail operators use to coordinate services and allocate trains and crews.

The other ideas describe pieces of railway timing but not the whole schedule: a travel time is the duration of a trip, not the planned times; moving trains without passengers refers to empty runs, which aren’t the published timetable itself; and how long a train stays at a station is dwell time, a component often shown within a timetable but not the complete concept.