Presumably the reason is too many passengers not paying attention and getting on the wrong train?
And not wishing to take responsibility for not paying attention and indeed getting on the wrong one. It would never be their fault, only the operators!
It was in use from September 2018 until the pandemic and required two additional staff on the platform to direct passengers to the correct train, plus a pair of mobile information screens for each pair of platforms (one at the buffer stops end, one at the gap between the two trains.)
I think this is more to try and prevent the stampede towards the platforms on the A end of the station and get people through the (quite small for a london terminus) gateline
And people absolutely routinely board the wrong train. I've even known the trolley hosts do it.
OT - in the early 1990s, Oxford's platform 3 (north-facing bay platform), at certain times of the day, had Malvern/Worcester service (often a 155) waiting at its outer end and the Bicester Town service (motley 1950s/60s era DMU mix) waiting at iits bufferstops.
In addition to what CyrusWuff has correctly said, the timetable plan since COVID has meant it's not needed to be routinely used.
I was on the 21.02 to Sheffield on 25/04 and the 10 car arrived and split but they surprised me by having the front half the 21.05 to Nottingham and our train went from a different platform. We had a 5 car Azuma. I heard at least 3 announcements telling the Nottingham crowd to move down and board the front 5 coaches.
Is this a new service Azuma from STP?
Were they both shown as Edinburgh trains on indicators? I'd have thought the slower one would have been described as destination Berwick or wherever the penultimate stop was. On Southeastern and its predecessors, if trains divide at Ashford with both halves for Ramsgate, one via Canterbury West and one via Dover, it's long been the practice (back to the days of wooden finger boards) to display and announce the via Dover portion as only going to Sandwich.
Because they were different operators, who would be selling different tickets at different price points. It's not like the Ramsgate example where it's all Southeastern so they get all the money regardless - both operators would be wanting revenue for their Edinburgh trains here. It's not an unmanageable difference of journey time either, relatively speaking for an InterCity route, close enough that people would choose whichever is cheaper.
Ah yes, that no doubt explains it. Thanks.
They were both operated by Cross Country (Virgin version).
But it's a classic example of the crass stupidity of not having train numbers. Every (I think) other system in Europe (and quite possibly beyond) uses them but we persist with this "not invented here" refusal to accept that they have some merit.
It's still the case that there are two trains to Edinburgh at New Street platforms at the same time once every hour; the scope for confusion is slightly reduced for some passengers by the fact that they're different operators. Some of the XC departures go beyond Edinburgh so will have different destinations on the screen - which may add to the confusion as an Avanti with destination "Edinburgh" will be more obvious than an XC call at Edinburgh. According to RTT, there were two occasions today when the two trains were platformed on the same island - though the fact that both involved platform alterations suggests someone somewhere tries to prevent that happening.
