Fermiboson
Member
Went on a trip from Oxford to London today, with very peculiar processes encountered. Hopefully forum members will be able to provide some insight/opinion on these happenings.
- There are no direct trains from Oxford into Euston so the usual GWR services terminate at Reading. The station announcement advises travellers for London to take Chiltern. However if you ask the ticket desk, they tell you to change at Reading for one of the ex Swansea/Plymouths. When asked they reconfirm that the call is both pick up and drop off.
- As the GWR train pulls into Reading the train driver announces “passengers for London please change for the 10xx service to London Euston on platform 11” (the stated time is actually below the minimum interchange time for Reading, but enough for a comfortable change for an able bodied person.)
- Reading station announcements advise those for London to take SWR or to take XR to Ealing Broadway and change for the tube. Platform 11 does not display the stated service ex Plymouth but when asking the staff on the platform waiting for the change of staff they confirm the service will be available for pickup. The train pulls up and the doors unlock; one or two people get off. The Reading call was apparently not announced on the train prior to stopping.
- Arrival into Euston goes smoothly.
On the way back I decided to go to Ealing Broadway per official advice. Very quickly it transpired that the tube frequencies matched up with the XR/GW departures but there was only ~3 mins from the tube arrival to XR departures. I took the District from Earl’s Court; it was much more crowded than I would have expected on a Saturday evening, even after Christmas. A sizeable proportion were holding luggages of various sizes and clogged up elevators at Earl’s Court.
- At Ealing Broadway the interchange was safe, but the crowd rushing up the stairs (incl. aforementioned luggage) who stated that platform 3 was overcrowded and we had to wait. The crowd was naturally agitated.
- After some two minutes we were let down the escalator to platform 3. The front of the train was crush loaded. We were told to walk slowly to the back of the train but not many people listened given it was already the booked departure time. The few who did follow these instructions however found the last two carriages virtually completely empty. As the train pulled out of Ealing Broadway there was a considerable amount of people with trolleys, prams or luggage left on the platform; however judging by eye the space in the last two carriages would not have been sufficient to alleviate the overcrowding in the front seven.
- The XR was subsequently further delayed by someone holding the doors open due to some sort of dispute. The XR had a connection time of only 8 minutes with the Oxford service, 3 with the last Swansea service of the night, and 14 with the last Gatwick service of the night. I believe the XR arrived into Reading +12 and judging by the amount of people trying to find a staff member and waiting for the 2015 northbound XC, it seems a lot of the train missed their connection as I did as well.
Based on these series of events, I have some questions:
- Why not run a nonstop shuttle between Ealing Broadway and Reading using, for example, the electrostars they keep piling onto the (as of this moment) empty Didcot stoppers? The paths are surely there since the service on the fasts has to be cut in order to fit into the WCML pathing. A frequent service would alleviate most worries of missing one XR.
- Has any consideration been given to the effect designating Ealing Broadway as the new terminus has on tube overcrowding? It seems to me that the worst of both worlds has been achieved, with travellers having to change twice or thrice and XR/GWR staff still having to deal with overcrowding in a station decidedly not designed to handle London terminus loads. If it is this bad on a Saturday evening I cannot imagine what problems were encountered yesterday.
- The inconsistency between announced information and information provided by staff are somewhat confusing; I still don’t know if the Reading calls are reliable. I did not see much overcrowding on trains between Reading and Euston; granted that is probably because of the obscurity of the call, but if then why should the train driver announce openly “change here for this”?
- I don’t want to throw any shade on the work of railway staff here because it seems to me they have worked very hard to make the best of a confusing and difficult situation. Would it not be possible however to timetable a bit better so that the tube scrum has the opportunity to arrive and staff to spread them out along the platform before they board instead of adopting the Euston solution of blockading the platform?
- There are no direct trains from Oxford into Euston so the usual GWR services terminate at Reading. The station announcement advises travellers for London to take Chiltern. However if you ask the ticket desk, they tell you to change at Reading for one of the ex Swansea/Plymouths. When asked they reconfirm that the call is both pick up and drop off.
- As the GWR train pulls into Reading the train driver announces “passengers for London please change for the 10xx service to London Euston on platform 11” (the stated time is actually below the minimum interchange time for Reading, but enough for a comfortable change for an able bodied person.)
- Reading station announcements advise those for London to take SWR or to take XR to Ealing Broadway and change for the tube. Platform 11 does not display the stated service ex Plymouth but when asking the staff on the platform waiting for the change of staff they confirm the service will be available for pickup. The train pulls up and the doors unlock; one or two people get off. The Reading call was apparently not announced on the train prior to stopping.
- Arrival into Euston goes smoothly.
On the way back I decided to go to Ealing Broadway per official advice. Very quickly it transpired that the tube frequencies matched up with the XR/GW departures but there was only ~3 mins from the tube arrival to XR departures. I took the District from Earl’s Court; it was much more crowded than I would have expected on a Saturday evening, even after Christmas. A sizeable proportion were holding luggages of various sizes and clogged up elevators at Earl’s Court.
- At Ealing Broadway the interchange was safe, but the crowd rushing up the stairs (incl. aforementioned luggage) who stated that platform 3 was overcrowded and we had to wait. The crowd was naturally agitated.
- After some two minutes we were let down the escalator to platform 3. The front of the train was crush loaded. We were told to walk slowly to the back of the train but not many people listened given it was already the booked departure time. The few who did follow these instructions however found the last two carriages virtually completely empty. As the train pulled out of Ealing Broadway there was a considerable amount of people with trolleys, prams or luggage left on the platform; however judging by eye the space in the last two carriages would not have been sufficient to alleviate the overcrowding in the front seven.
- The XR was subsequently further delayed by someone holding the doors open due to some sort of dispute. The XR had a connection time of only 8 minutes with the Oxford service, 3 with the last Swansea service of the night, and 14 with the last Gatwick service of the night. I believe the XR arrived into Reading +12 and judging by the amount of people trying to find a staff member and waiting for the 2015 northbound XC, it seems a lot of the train missed their connection as I did as well.
Based on these series of events, I have some questions:
- Why not run a nonstop shuttle between Ealing Broadway and Reading using, for example, the electrostars they keep piling onto the (as of this moment) empty Didcot stoppers? The paths are surely there since the service on the fasts has to be cut in order to fit into the WCML pathing. A frequent service would alleviate most worries of missing one XR.
- Has any consideration been given to the effect designating Ealing Broadway as the new terminus has on tube overcrowding? It seems to me that the worst of both worlds has been achieved, with travellers having to change twice or thrice and XR/GWR staff still having to deal with overcrowding in a station decidedly not designed to handle London terminus loads. If it is this bad on a Saturday evening I cannot imagine what problems were encountered yesterday.
- The inconsistency between announced information and information provided by staff are somewhat confusing; I still don’t know if the Reading calls are reliable. I did not see much overcrowding on trains between Reading and Euston; granted that is probably because of the obscurity of the call, but if then why should the train driver announce openly “change here for this”?
- I don’t want to throw any shade on the work of railway staff here because it seems to me they have worked very hard to make the best of a confusing and difficult situation. Would it not be possible however to timetable a bit better so that the tube scrum has the opportunity to arrive and staff to spread them out along the platform before they board instead of adopting the Euston solution of blockading the platform?
