Search results

On the other hand, try imagining that you've walked into King's Cross at the entrance you've suggested, at the T-2 minutes 30 seconds that you've suggested, but this time imagine your train is a nice short 4-car service leaving from platform 10. That's right next to where you've walked in, right...

Won't those people now chuck their cases down in the middle of the concourse and start blaming everyone but themselves? (Thus creating a trip hazard that affects more people...)

Realistically, this problem is only ever going to be solved by a human applying case-by-case discretion. Never by a blanket "everything gets removed exactly this many minutes before departure". There is a difference between a peak-time train on platform 0 that is already very full (especially...

Perhaps the reason I'm running late to arrive at King's Cross isn't my fault? Maybe I was delayed on my cross-London tube connection? Maybe I had to queue for ages to use the lift at Paddington because I'm not allowed to take my suitcase on the escalator any more? ;-) (for people who don't get...

The specific example I picked (somebody now playing chicken with a pedestrian crossing and being hit by a bus) is obviously fanciful, and an extreme consequence at the highly unlikely end of the scale. But the general point is not. Decisions such as this move risk elsewhere. They don't...

This doesn't reduce the risk caused by people running. It just moves that risk elsewhere, which seems to be a classic railway "solution" to risk problems nowadays. Yes, it will reduce the number of very late people who run inside the station. But the subset of people who are a little bit late...

A couple of years ago I had a complaint with Thameslink (related to repeated Delay Repay rejection for increasingly spurious reasons), who sent me vouchers totalling approximately £100 that were only cashable at GTR stations, and I don't live close to or regularly travel to any such station. I...

Although Greater Anglia already made some fare rises on those weekend tickets a few months ago, which when combined with their price rices now give a total rise of just over 10% for the year. e.g. the Cambridge to London Terminals GA only ticket went up 5.9% from £17 to £18 in September, which...

You say "this evening" which would have been Sunday when you wrote the post, is that correct? Because it's possible there was an identical incident at Cambridge North the day before, on Saturday. My train on Saturday evening was held at Cambridge for almost an hour with the official...

With the big caveat that weekends are my only experience of travelling to London, the fast trains to King's Cross are horribly overcrowded. The Liverpool Street trains aren't. But the semi-fast and stopping services to King's Cross/St Pancras also aren't overcrowded. If the price differential is...

The context of my specific posts in this thread (which I admit is now probably lost in a couple of pages of history) is the case where you've been away from home from several days, your accommodation booking has ended, and you now need to get home. I fully agree with not starting your journey in...

In the case of airlines, I'd expect to be able to turn up at the airport on the day of my booked flight, find that some proportion of flights are cancelled and some proportion are still running, maybe get lucky and still get home, maybe not. But if not, I'd expect them to do something to try and...

Saying "do not travel" to somebody who is at home and about to embark on a day trip out somewhere, or go to work (assuming they can also work from home), or about to go away on day 1 of a multi-day trip (can always wait until tomorrow) is one thing, Saying "do not travel" to somebody who is...

I read this and immediately decided that I had to reply and suggest Cambridge, from platform 7 or 8, to any of platforms 1, 2 or 3. Then I read the rest of the thread and saw this: :)

I happened to be thinking about the problem of displaying "or" this morning, at Ely. The signalling at Ely is such that you can sometimes know a train will be going into either platform 1, or into platforms "2 or 3", before you know for sure which of 2 or 3 it will be using. Platforms 2 and 3...

I was assuming automated announcements, now that most stations (that I use, anyway) seem to have automated all of the passenger information screens and announcements. There must be some data received by the information system to trigger the announcements, so it should be possible to somehow mine...

Could you collect some data along the lines of how many platform changes were announced within "x" minutes of the train's actual (not scheduled) departure time, for some value of "x" to be determined? I don't know what a sensible value of "x" is, but in the extreme, you could make a reasonable...

And the point in time when things were changed such that the signaller could no longer shout to the station announcer is the same point in time at which the passenger information systems were upgraded to be able to automatically determine this information from the signalling system for...

My gut feel (and it is only a gut feel, I wish I had hard data to back this up) is that platform alterations are now announced later than they were in the past. I recall a platform alteration announcement used to result in a polite "tut" to the person next to you on the platform, followed by a...

Older versions of the Conditions of Travel used to say "you will be treated as breaking your journey if you leave a Train Company’s or Rail Service Company’s stations after you start your journey other than to [list of exceptions]". Which clearly allows passing through the barriers for any...