Valkyrien

I don't know about holding them, but If trains are over 6 minutes early they definitely drop to the bottom of my priority stack.

its much less about doing the drivers job for them and much more about "I might need this track to handle a curveball before you leave." Also you may get signaled into the platform a few minutes before you actually get there, I've usually got the EDR open and anything I route to a platform I set the departure reminder and then leave it red. I've had times at Z where not routing a train straight through saves my skin.

I see two valid points in this thread: 1) Early trains cause dispatch problems, especially with dispatchers not having the full suite of signals at the moment, so they can't easily squirrel you away on a siding if they need to, especially if you're supposed to stop there for a 3 min layover in 20-30 minutes and the dispatcher only has two platforms to work with. 2) Throwing a fit for a train being 4 minutes early is taking the piss. Please drive to the timetable, but +/-5 minutes is fine. The current timetable seems to be balanced at running 10 kmh under any trains particular vmax, so letting the train target 5 or 10 kmh slow or fast from that target is how I tend to reel trains in.