Conflicting advice on train and on platform

[SSp]

Northbound West coast trains could only go as far as Lancaster yesterday. Fortunately I was making a simple Wigan NW to Preston trip.

On Wigan platform, those for Glasgow (or Edinburgh) were advised to travel instead to Manchester to continue their journey from there.

On board, advice was to change at Preston for Leeds/York (!!) . Or take rrb from Preston.

Is there a plan in place to split passenger loads, hence the conflicting advice? Or were one bunch of passengers intentionally disadvantaged here?

 

[Bantamzen]

A colleague of mine was traveling up to Glasgow (via Carlisle) from Leeds yesterday, and the picture was ever changing. Initially the advice was to use the ECML, however there was then an issue somewhere around the Darlington area on that so it could be that the advice was changing with the growing number of issues? It wasn't a good day for heading across the border yesterday!

 

[stuart]

I think the root problem here, as so often, will be lack of consistent communication from those in control rooms to those on the ground. I think that's far more likely than any planned tactics.

I was once on a late-running Sunday evening train from Inverness to Glasgow, held at Inverness for an incoming connection from the north, and which then itself missed a Glasgow to Dundee connection at Perth, the next train being about an hour and a half later. Advice given on the train was to travel on to Stirling and get a train to Dundee from there (which would then travel back up the same bit of line to Perth again and form the service from Perth an hour and a half later). I challenged the conductor/guard about this and he admitted it sounded silly to him too, but it was just what he'd been told to say. I got off at Perth, found a manager and politely put the case that I didn't have a problem with Scotrail holding a train for one connection, so long as they accepted the consequences and followed through by holding the Dundee train (which thay had failed to do). Twenty minutes later I was in a taxi heading for Dundee, while anyone who had actually taken the on-board advice was just getting off at Stirling ...

 

[30907]

Northbound West coast trains could only go as far as Lancaster yesterday. Fortunately I was making a simple Wigan NW to Preston trip.

On Wigan platform, those for Glasgow (or Edinburgh) were advised to travel instead to Manchester to continue their journey from there.

On board, advice was to change at Preston for Leeds/York (!!) . Or take rrb from Preston.

Is there a plan in place to split passenger loads, hence the conflicting advice? Or were one bunch of passengers intentionally disadvantaged here?

I don't see the problem.

If you are at WNW going via Manchester is sensible. If you are on a train heading north from there, going via Preston is the only option anyway.