Inappropriate platform change announcements

[mikeg]

I'm just on a service from York to Bridlington via Selby and Hull, departing from York platform 1. A couple of minutes before the train was due to depart, railboard, most online systems with the exception of RTT (which often doesn''t update anyway) changed the patform to platform 9. In addition an announcement of a platform change was put out at York station. It panicked me a bit, but in the end the train ran from platform 1 as booked. What is the cause of this and whose fault is it? Also presumably Northern will have a system in place to prevent last minute passengers on advances from being inappropriately penalty fared. Also would LNER be responsible for delay repay as station operator for putting out this announcement and causing passengers to miss their train? Luckily I was already on the train waiting to depart and the staff were able to reassure me...

 

[Stephen42]

Am assuming this is the 19:41 to Bridlington from York.

Realtime Trains | 2R29 1941 York to Bridlington | 11/06/2026

Real-time train running information for 2R29 1941 departure from York to Bridlington on 11/06/2026. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

What is the cause of this and whose fault is it?

This service had a manual platform allocation entered for platform 9. Manual allocations exist as some alterations are decided well before a route is set to the platform (train failure ahead, infrastructure issue etc) and gives additional time for people to switch. These allocations are not automatically overridden if the train looks to be on a different platform. Believe this is because in rare circumstances the automatic system could be wrong and need to be overridden manually.

National Rail Enquiries and any other system using the public facing information system will still show it as having left from platform 9 for example:


It's likely the wrong train was accidentally manually allocated platform 9. The 1M72 19:37 Cross Country from York to Birmingham New Street was switched from platform 5 to platform 9. This was an automatic allocation by the system realising the train was in platform 9 not 5 and I'd guess this was the intended target of the manual allocation.

Also presumably Northern will have a system in place to prevent last minute passengers on advances from being inappropriately penalty fared. Also would LNER be responsible for delay repay as station operator for putting out this announcement and causing passengers to miss their train? Luckily I was already on the train waiting to depart and the staff were able to reassure me...

At most stations the announcement would happen automatically triggered by the change in the system. I haven't tried to look at which organisation entered the change. Delay Repay would be with Northern as their train, an appeal would probably be needed and manual review of the different data sources.

While it's a manual error, I'd attribute a fair chunk to the underlying systems. I'd be surprised if the user was warned the train already seemed to be in platform 1. Similarly the data architecture is relatively simple and a softer manual intention overridden automatically would often be more appropriate to avoid systems showing incorrectly if the plan changes again.

 

[Mattplans]

This service had a manual platform allocation entered for platform 9. Manual allocations exist as some alterations are decided well before a route is set to the platform (train failure ahead, infrastructure issue etc) and gives additional time for people to switch.

who makes that manual platform allocation change? is that the signaller or toc staff?

 

[lrbvoyager]

The signalling staff will make the platform alteration but the station announcer or whatever LNER’s version of that will have to input the platform change. This is normally done by the signalled contacting the announcer who will do it through their system.