I’m amazed by this thread.
OP says the last train of the day ran early. If so, it might be deliberate or it might be a mistake – the driver’s watch being wrong as suggested here several times.
Trains ought to run on time, especially the last one, and while late running is often unavoidable early running is avoidable and shouldn’t happen.
Going on about how passengers should be on the platform in plenty of time is irrelevant and doesn’t change the fact that a train ought not to leave earlier than the timetable says.
Post no. 7 indicates that the train ran only half a minute early, not as much as the OP recorded, so maybe his watch was wrong.
OK so far.
But then some posters get worked up about the idea that early running might get reported (to TfL in this case), accusations of “grassing” and “trolling”, that only a person who was directly affected by something should think of reporting it, the risk of a driver being disciplined, and so on.
In fact, if it was reported, TfL could look up TRUST just as poster no. 7 did, find the train ran half a minute early, tell the person who wrote in that actually it wasn’t as early as he’d claimed, and issue reminders to all drivers to try not to leave before time. There’s nothing immoral, interfering or job-threatening about that last bit, is there?
I’m a passenger. I think most railway staff do a good job, most of the time. In fact, most people do a good job most of the time. I wrote about a very helpful guard in post no. 3 on the thread "Bad Day at SWT NR Alliance Office 10-2-15" last week.
But when there’s a large number of very defensive posts, criticising anyone who is critical of something that occurs on the railway (in this case a single incident late one evening), arguing that passengers should mind their own business, implying that if you miss your train when it left early it’s your own fault – then it really doesn’t help the reputation of the railway at all.
