Main line train trouble apparently

[father_and_son]

It would take the clueless halfwits about three years to reprogram the trains to do that. At Portslade the East bound platform has been 12 cars long for as long as I have lived and yet for a long time only the front 7 would open going East bound. They finally fixed the issue - or rather attempted to - by making the front ELEVEN open but not the last car. A few months after that they finally got it right.

They use a GPS to determine where the train is and the doors are locked if they aren't "at the station". However, no one had the brains to add a "direction" to the logic, so Portslade = 7 carriages.

Its the station I use and the number of times I saw someone miss a train because they wouldn't wait while they ran past the 5 locked carriages to get to the first open door. Got caught myself a few times.


What really narks me is that the train companies are there to convey "PEOPLE" from one place to another, not empty trains. When an inbound train is running a little late then hold back the connection. I'm not talking 5 minutes+ here but the number of time my connection leaves at the second the doors open on the late running inbound train is ridiculous - 30secs can be recovered between stations relatively easily.
The jobsworth attitude of the staff doesn't help calm the frayed tempers either.

 

[British Bulldog]

Nope, it was more "things" were under the involved train, which was also disabled in the incident. Will leave it as that as the details arent nice.

Unless you was directly involved in the incident I very much doubt you would even know the details, Well the correct details rather than the guess work and gossip details that is. There's relatively few people directly involved in such incidents and even some of those neither get to know or even want to know the full details and of those that do know, Well they tend to keep the gory details private for a number of reasons.

 

[Arthur]

You are ****ing kidding me!!

[tweet]377376212374806528[/tweet]

 

[Papa Lazarou]

There are reports on twitter (from our own Virgos Haircut) of someone beign hit by a train as New Cross Gate.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Can't disagree with anything Arthur, simster and tmls have said. I've commuted from brighton for nearly 20 years and in that time the price has gone from 1780 to 4800. Now I appreciate there are more trains, and some of them are longer, and the southern ones have aircon (which makes up for no windows) But I have to stand more now than ever before and cancellations are greater.

The major issue of privatising train operators away from those that run the infratructure is that the operators can make profits without making any discernible improvement to the ability to run the service.

Having done Shoreham / London Bridge for almost 25 years, I was wondering the other day what my original season ticket price was back in '88, I can't remember. However, from Shoreham, there are NOT more trains, still 2 direct ones in the morning and 3 in the evening, the same as there ever were. I would say the reliability is no better than it was when I started. So, basically no improvement in 25 years, what other industry can claim that !

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

SouthernRailUK ‏@SouthernRailUK 3m
INFO: A person has been hit by a train at New Cross Gate, delays Between Norwood Jnc and London Bridge via Forest Hill....1/2

SouthernRailUK ‏@SouthernRailUK 2m
Alternative Transport, SouthEastern, South West Trains, First Capital Connect, London Underground & TFL Buses are all accepting tickets.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

SouthernRailUK ‏@SouthernRailUK 3m
INFO: A person has been hit by a train at New Cross Gate, delays Between Norwood Jnc and London Bridge via Forest Hill....1/2

SouthernRailUK ‏@SouthernRailUK 2m
Alternative Transport, SouthEastern, South West Trains, First Capital Connect, London Underground & TFL Buses are all accepting tickets.

So, will impact the London bridge sevices south. So Arthur is being targetted again.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

What really narks me is that the train companies are there to convey "PEOPLE" from one place to another, not empty trains. When an inbound train is running a little late then hold back the connection. I'm not talking 5 minutes+ here but the number of time my connection leaves at the second the doors open on the late running inbound train is ridiculous - 30secs can be recovered between stations relatively easily.
The jobsworth attitude of the staff doesn't help calm the frayed tempers either.

Nope they would rather shuttle empty trains up and down the line like a big train set.

Also this is a classic example of why even a min late departing is crucial.

Take a Sunday eve. There is from London Bridge the 23.41 to Three Bridges (its an FCC why stop at TB I have no idea) but stops at East Croydon at 23.56.

The Victoria train calls at East Croydon at 00.01

But even if its one min late departing LB you wont make the connection and they dont hold the train so why not build in an extra few mins? ITS LATE AT NIGHT THERE ARE HARDLY ANY TRAINS.

So you are left WAITING AN HR AND A HALF AT EAST CROYDON until the next one comes from Victoria which is 1am.

Madness. Its not the commuter rush where there will be another along in half hr or less.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

Its also disgraceful that at 6.30PM they were STILL blaming the incident which was 5.30AM.

I mean COME ON. SERIOUSLY.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

And 12 yes TWELVE hours later Southern are still churning out excuses that this poor sod is the cause of their late trains.

Yes that.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Nope they would rather shuttle empty trains up and down the line like a big train set.

It is true that sometimes it feels like the companies purpose is to move a train from A to B, and customers are an inconvenience to that aim.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

Delays, cancellations, short formations are all part and parcel of commuting. Whilst they are frustrating as long as they are the exception and not the rule then I personally can deal with them. As you say they are becoming more and more frequent these days. My first tasks after switching my alarm off in the morning is to check the national rail app and twitter to see what delights await me. Should I really have to do this every morning? Even then there is a good chance there will be disruption of short formation which southern don't seem to see as a disruption so don't announce it anywhere. I'm fortunate that I'm flexible with work and if it is a case of standing up all the way into London or getting a later train I will always chose the latter.

My line (Uckfield line) still has diesel trains so they are very limited as to what rolling stock they can use. Any problems with it they take a coach (which is really 2 coaches) off the tracks and we have to suffer because the line is massively over crowded. When I first started commuting it was the done thing for people of Crowborough to drive over to Tunbridge Wells as there wasn't a direct service from Crowborough. Since that has been introduced the service has gone full circle and now people from Tunbridge Wells are getting on the service at Eridge (and I'm sure a few people from HH are getting on at Uckfield) because comparatively the price is allot cheaper and the trains are allot nicer (air con!!). My annual ticket is about £2700 compared with £3500 up the road in TW. For that you give up the frequency of trains there is on the Hastings line but for a £800 saving obviously allot of people think that it is worth it.

Every time there is a problem these days its always someone else's fault. Ernest's post is a prime example. The train companies will blame national rail, national rail will blame the train companies. When the train companies can't blame national rail they'll blame lack of resource, when national rail can't blame the trains companies they'll blame a 3rd party contractor or some other factor like the weather (something we only appear to have in this country).

How is any of this the commuters fault? You can't really blame anyone for what happened yesterday as no one can make provisions for someone throwing themselves in front of a train. BUT as I stated yesterday it happened at 5am and was cleared by 8:30. Why then were there still problems at 21:30?!? I can only put it down to shit planning or some other daft reason that companies get fined for late/non running services.

As I said I'm fortunate with work so yesterday I worked from home first thing and if it hadn't have been for a lunch time meeting I probably would have stayed at home all day. I got the 10:45 which wasn't listed on any of the dot matrix displays at the station, it was only the fact I was following the progress of the down train on the app on my phone that I knew it existed. Everyone else at the station at that time weren't commuters and were horrified that according to the board the next train was an hour wait. Then on said train we made it as far as Oxted where we sat and sat and sat. I assumed this was due to congestion further down the line. No! The very honest driver said because we were waiting for a change of train crew!! Eventually we got to East Croydon where the service was terminated.

To add insult to injury my train back last night was half an hour late back. As it was late leaving LB all the folk for Croydon and Oxted got other services so it was actually quite pleasant capacity wise. The reason it ended up being half hour late was because we, the fast train, were put behind a stopping train so we crawled down the track. That to me sounds like bad planning and/or incompetence rather than lack of resource. We ended up getting back to Crowborough just over half an hour late so people, myself included would be able to claim a part of their ticket price back. In my case it works out at about £2.80. However National Rail obviously had other ideas and decided they didn't want to pay out and blatantly lied!

Have a look at the time of departure at Eridge and the arrival time at Crowborough!!

For those of you that don't know Eridge to Crowborough is about a 5 minute journey. It's got nothing to do with the fact I won't be able to claim a couple of quid back it's the principle of the matter. They've lied to try and save themselves a few quid. I pointed this out to them on twitter a got some bullshit excuse that the Eridge time was manually entered by Southern (see what I mean about one blaming the other!!) and their timings were correct. They weren't! I was on the train. Look at the time on my phone, we still hadn't arrived at Crowborough station when I took that screengrab!

I don't know any other organisation can treat their customers as badly as they do and get away with it (with the possible exception of the FA or the football club at times). Sadly they know they can get away with it as there isn't any other alternative!

Dunno why I've typed all that as nothing is going to change. The service will get shitter but I'll still keep using it.

A SPLENDID post sir. Bravo

 

[Simster]

The last bit in Arthur's post sums it up for me. They've blatently fiddled the timings, and I've seen that done so many times before, normally lying about their services not being 5 mins late when they are. Instead, they will say 3 or 4 mins late so that their punctuality figures look good.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

The last bit in Arthur's post sums it up for me. They've blatently fiddled the timings, and I've seen that done so many times before, normally lying about their services not being 5 mins late when they are. Instead, they will say 3 or 4 mins late so that their punctuality figures look good.

Yes that.

And also that metro article where Southern trumpet they are 96% on time or whatever when the true figure was about 45% AND in same report (whilst still shit) FCC actually BEAT them!!

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Yes that.

And also that metro article where Southern trumpet they are 96% on time or whatever when the true figure was about 45% AND in same report (whilst still shit) FCC actually BEAT them!!

I don't know what checks there are on the stats they claim. They say that something like 97% of people are "happy" with the service. If they ask the question at weekends, on a sunny day that might be true, but I doubt many commuters would agree much of the time.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

I don't know what checks there are on the stats they claim. They say that something like 97% of people are "happy" with the service. If they ask the question at weekends, on a sunny day that might be true, but I doubt many commuters would agree much of the time.

Tell you what it will be at weekends when all the day trippers are on their jolly jaunt to london.

They wont ask on a Monday morning when there is a broken down train or a door failure resulting in a cancellation in the morning. Or a ****ing signal failure.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

The good news is winter will be upon us shortly. So expect ALOT more suicides around that area and the inevitable signal failures and broken down trains.

 

[HawkTheSeagull]

Unless you was directly involved in the incident I very much doubt you would even know the details, Well the correct details rather than the guess work and gossip details that is. There's relatively few people directly involved in such incidents and even some of those neither get to know or even want to know the full details and of those that do know, Well they tend to keep the gory details private for a number of reasons.

A vague detail gets logged in reports in the internal system which is viewable by a lot of railway staff, though exact details luckily will only be known to a few people.

Southern are launching an investigation as to why the service took so long to get sorted yesterday, sounds as if the top dog at Southern is pretty pissed off about the reaction from his company, of course no one would be punished though and they will of course say "we have learnt from our lessons" and the next time an incident like this sadly happens, the same old crap will happen.

With connections, if its the same company, then they can be held but it all depends on the line. If its a train misses its "slot" on the mainline, then it will be held behind other trains, in turn further becoming late and delaying trains behind it.

And Arthur, Id get that reported if I was you, its either Southern fiddling around or a GPS fault, probably the latter.

Another person has been hit today as well at New Cross Gate, FCC diverting via Elephant and Castle and Southern diverting via Tulse Hill or to Victoria. Wont cause disruption anything like yesterday though. Lines reopened at 12PM, an hour after the incident.

Some good news from Southern today though, the first of some brand new trains has entered service this morning.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Southern are launching an investigation as to why the service took so long to get sorted yesterday, sounds as if the top dog at Southern is pretty pissed off about the reaction from his company, of course no one would be punished though and they will of course say "we have learnt from our lessons" and the next time an incident like this sadly happens, the same old crap will happen.

I think that's the point for many of us commuters. I'm sure we can understand that there are bound to be issues, it's how you deal with them that counts, and time after time (after time, after time etc. ...... ) it's exactly the same chaos.

 

[brightn'ove]

I think you're confusing the Southern's Coastway East services with East Coast trains from London to York, Leeds, etc.

This.

Never had a problem with east coast, and I must have travelled the London to York route at least a couple of dozen times now, the only time there was a delay was due to a brake failure which is obviously out of their control but the speed at which they sorted it out was fantastic and we were off and running in no time at all.

Another good experience with east coast was that when I tried to purchase a sandwich meal deal on the catering car my card wouldn't work so she just let me have it for the change I had in my pocket (which was far less than what it was worth).

In my experience it just seems that southern loathe their customers, and will do anything to ensure that you don't want to travel with them again.