Poor platform allocating at Liverpool Lime Street

[bramling]

Albeit staff travelling pass will not be doing any kind of security check, or be any more aware of their surroundings than a regular passenger. Equally Thameslink RPIs are so rare that I can imagine trains run around for days at a time without encountering any.

Exactly. So it’s a nonsense.

<sarcasm> I wonder how I managed to survive 25 years travelling virtually daily on DOO 365 services with no staff presence without anything awful happening!

So essentially these trains (and DOO Southeastern trains) are unattended most of the time they’re in service!

And even if Southeastern metro did have a staff presence on the trains I’m not sure it would have done much to stop the persistent vandalism.

 

[Trothy]

The planners at MK have the relevant information for Lime St Controls at Liverpool - no idea why they never got included with the TPRs though.

Edit: on a similar note, TPRs are missing information for Blackpool North as well

To be fair, Blackpool North does have a useful override switch which can be used to bypass the Lime St control if you have an assurance the train will fit on the Platform in question. So it's not quite as much of an issue there.

 

[Parjon]

The main reason would be to allow incoming services to arrive into platforms 1 and 2 while simultaneously departing from 3-5.
This has become a lot more relevent recently as signal 5071 has been signed out of use for weeks due to a defective theatre indicator with no spare available.

Sounds like you're suggesting the issue re the unwise double-stacking is likely due to mitigating impact of a temporary fault? That's certainly easier to live with.

Also several platforms are *just* too short for double set 319's or 350's.

Couldn't this have been remedied when they did the other platform works a few years back?

 

[KevinTurvey]

It is a shame that this is happening given the expense and disruption of the recent upgrade and increase in platforms, whilst at the same time we have had service cuts.
In 2019 we had around 15 departures per hour, now this is down to 11-12 departures per hour.

Anyone remember the Calder Valley and Cardiff services we were told we were getting, and will we ever get the second Birmingham train back, or the full CLC route stoppers rather than just cut back to Warrington Central?

On Sundays its about 6-7, and all of the 3 hourly services to Manchester leave within 5 minutes of each other.

 

[Krokodil]

Anyone remember the ... Cardiff services we were told we were getting

Cardiff services are coming. Portion-worked as part of the TFW service to Chester (which will be reinstated, then return to hourly once its fleet stop self-immolating on a weekly basis).

 

[Parjon]

It is a shame that this is happening given the expense and disruption of the recent upgrade and increase in platforms, whilst at the same time we have had service cuts.
In 2019 we had around 15 departures per hour, now this is down to 11-12 departures per hour.

Anyone remember the Calder Valley and Cardiff services we were told we were getting, and will we ever get the second Birmingham train back, or the full CLC route stoppers rather than just cut back to Warrington Central?

On Sundays its about 6-7, and all of the 3 hourly services to Manchester leave within 5 minutes of each other.

Indeed. Instead of getting vexed about Southport trains terminating at Manchester Victoria rather than Manchester Airport, the city region authorities need to aggressively lobby for better services to support growth.

I believe the Birmingham services will be restored in the coming year, but who knows when the Cardiff services will be arriving. I believe the two tph to London will come in due course, but eastbound inter-regional services are shockingly poor now, not helped by TPE. Had the government split the EMids service, the city could have effectively been down to two slow Northern services an hour. The Glasgow service also needs to go hourly, and the City Line local lines need a train every 10-15 minutes. Not one an hour!

 

[Surreytraveller]

The DfT can and does carry out unannounced audits of TOC compliance with its security rules. In this case I would guess that while the time between arrival and departure may be 38 minutes the actual time the train was genuinely unattended never breached the 30 minute limit. Quite possibly some common sense scheduling of the cleaner's walk-through helped avoid any breech.

No one actually cares when the DfT carry out audits. A brief goes out afterwards about wearing lanyards or whatever, when gets rapidly forgotten about. Wearing a lanyard isn't going to stop a terrorist attack

 

[LowLevel]

No one actually cares when the DfT carry out audits. A brief goes out afterwards about wearing lanyards or whatever, when gets rapidly forgotten about. Wearing a lanyard isn't going to stop a terrorist attack

Not sure about that. I once had to drag an area manager out of his annual budget meeting over a failed DfT security inspection and I've never seen a man's face go from angry to terrified once he saw that warrant card so quickly!