Passenger Information Office  Passenger Services Timetable W · valid until further notice · subject to alteration without notice

Passenger Information Office · issued on demand · long overdue

Timetable W

A 28-day circular service that is not 28 days.a About one good week in four, plus one peak day.b Peak lasts about 24 hours.c There was always a timetable. You were just never given it. Select any day for the relevant conditions.

W Circular service · Day 1 to Day 28 and return Runs approximately 400 timesi · No two runs identicala
Depot (days 1–5) Service rising (6–13) Peak · 24 h (14) Alteration (Cut 1 · Cut 2) Revised timetable

Notices of alteration

Two reductions per service. You have heard of one.

Cut 1: first reduction Days 15–16 · immediately after peak

Following peak service, principal services are withdrawn at short notice. Oestradiol falls from a peak commonly in the region of 250–400 pg/mL to roughly 100–150 within about 48 hours: a cut of around 60–75%, more at the top of the range.d

This is not the disruption you have heard of. That one is later and better publicised. This one is sharper.

Cut 2: second disruption Days 24–28 · three to five days before arrival

Progesterone is withdrawn in the final days of the service. This is the disruption with the famous name, and it is the second one, not the first.e

The Office notes that passengers who have heard of only one alteration have, on average, heard of this one.

Signalling notice Revised timetable period

During parts of the revised timetable, neutral signals may display as adverse. The signal is not faulty and the reading is not invented: the signalling equipment has been recalibrated, and both parties are correct.f

The mirror runs the same rolling stock throughout. The lens is subject to alteration.g

Onward services

Not part of the circular timetable
Long-distance service40 weeks · service commences before passenger boards

Pregnancy is conventionally timed from the first day of the last menstrual period, approximately two weeks before conception. The Office did not design the numbering system. Infrastructure notices for the duration:

Blood plasma
Volume up by roughly 45–50%. The popular claim that it doubles is an overstatement, and the Office declines to print it.h
Cardiac output
Up roughly 30–50% through pregnancy, rising further during labour and immediately after delivery. Normal service resumes over the following weeks.
Energy
Total expenditure around 2.2 times resting metabolism, sustained for months, against a human endurance ceiling of roughly 2.5. The service runs just under the maximum the species can sustain.
Signalling
Grey matter is remodelled, in regions used for reading other people, and the changes are measurable at least two years on.
On arrival
A large internal wound remains where the placenta detached. The organ occupying the site immediately beforehand was typically around 22 centimetres across. It appears in no brochure. It appears in this one.
Line closure procedureThe closure itself takes one day

The closure is declared twelve months after the final service, in arrears. Nobody is informed on the day, including the operator.

Before
Everything before the declared day is perimenopause: planned works lasting years, commonly four to eight and sometimes ten.
The day
Menopause is one day. It is identified retrospectively, twelve months after the fact, like most things on this railway.
After
Everything after is postmenopause, which is the rest of the line's history.
Timing
Typically declared around age 51, commonly between 45 and 55. In roughly one passenger in a hundred the line closes before 40, which is not on this timetable and deserves its own.
Symptoms
A widely circulated checklist for the works period runs to 34 items. Most passengers can name two.j

Conditions of carriage

  1. aAll times approximate. The 28-day figure is an average. The usual range is 21 to 35 days, and an individual's timing moves month to month. No service is required to resemble the average, and most do not. Most of the variation is in the first half; the second half is generally less variable. Unpredictable at the start and more punctual at the end, which rail users will recognise. Boundaries on the diagram are service levels, not endocrinology: strictly, the follicular phase begins on day 1, and the depot period runs inside it. Depot occupancy is typically two to seven days; five is printed for the diagram.
  2. bOn the good bit. The rising week: oestrogen climbing; passengers commonly report better mood, greater sociability, higher pain tolerance and better sleep. Plus peak. Asked directly, the source interview answers about one week; its own closing summary rounds this up to two. The Office prints the answers, not the summary, and invites passengers to consider which counting flatters whom. The board marks days 6–13 as rising because that is what the oestrogen is doing; the week passengers describe as good is the later portion of the climb.
  3. cPeak service lasts approximately 24 hours. Favourable passenger reports include mood, appearance, confidence and libido. No minimum service level is guaranteed. One day per service. Day 14 on the diagram only: in operation, peak runs roughly fourteen days before the next arrival, wherever that falls, which on a 21-day service is day 7 and on a 35-day service is day 21. The peak moves. The diagram does not.
  4. dOn the first reduction. Peak oestradiol is commonly 250–400 pg/mL and falls to roughly 100–150 within about two days, recovering partly mid-service before falling again. The widely quoted 85% is the top of the range, not the schedule. The popular comparison, that a male passenger would need to age decades over a weekend to feel it, is an illustration and not a measurement, and is printed here as the former.
  5. eThere are two reductions. The famous one is the second. Complaints addressed to the wrong reduction cannot be processed.
  6. fOn signalling. If you said nothing and she heard something, the equipment on both ends performed to specification. You were not lying. She was not imagining it. The Office does not adjudicate between correctly functioning instruments.
  7. gOn the mirror. Same body, different lens. The mirror is not consulted on this arrangement.
  8. hCorrections. This timetable prints 45–50% where popular accounts say the blood "nearly doubles". Where the truth is sufficient, the Office declines the exaggeration. The truth here is sufficient. On twin services the expansion runs substantially higher, and the popular claim edges toward honest.
  9. iApproximately 400 services run across the operating life of the line. Each one is scheduled, run, and cleaned up without external assistance, comment, or, typically, acknowledgement. The figure assumes the line runs uninterrupted; long-distance services and certain engineering arrangements reduce it.
  10. jOn the checklist of 34. A widely circulated list; no clinical body maintains an official count. The Office reprints the number to make a narrower point: whatever the true figure, most passengers can name two.
  11. kKnowing the timetable does not stop the train. She usually knows exactly where the service is. Knowing that turbulence is normal does not stop the aircraft moving. The Office apologises for the aircraft in a railway document, and for very little else.
  12. lThis timetable describes population averages, verified against clinical sources on 29 August 2026. It is not medical advice, and no individual service follows it exactly, which is footnote a, which is the point. The board is a diagram, not a tracker: the Office does not know where any particular service currently is, and declines to guess.

"So how do women work?"

Perfectly. On schedule. Every month.