Information when things go wrong

[Coryton]

46 minutes ago, eastwestdivide said:

Thanks. I have used it, but it's only as accurate as what the bus comany sends, i.e. in many cases nothing.

Case in point yesterday:

I'm at the stop (at a bus station) at the right time, bus stop display says due now, bus company app no info, bustimes no sign of the bus.

2-3 mins after the bus is due, bus stop display now shows the next one (half an hour away), bus company app shows no info, bustimes no sign of the bus, only the next one, apparently half an hour away.

10 mins after the bus is due, a driver wanders past, gets on a parked bus at the wrong stop, fires up the destination board, everyone wanders down to the other stop, and we leave 15 late. 

 

Other times I've been tracking it on the bus co app, and then it just disappeared.

 

When it works, marvellous - our local bus app even shows how many seats were available on the bus, but I'd say it works 50% of the time, show no info 25% and wrong info the other 25%.

 

Rant over. 

 

Not helpful. As I said, I haven't been able to try it out in many places recently, but where I have used it I've found it very accurate apart from the occasional bus that just didn't appear at all.

Unlike the real time information at stops. The last time I caught a bus, the bus shelter screen denied all knowledge of the bus I wanted to catch. But bustimes (and the company's own app) correctly showed it.

 

[Oldddudders]

When they work those bus things can be quite fun. A couple of years ago Sherry had a Torbay hospital appointment, and travelled by the 35A and 35C services out and back to St Marychurch. I was able to monitor her progress on the local live map from here in France!

[eastwestdivide]

45 minutes ago, Coryton said:

Unlike the real time information at stops. The last time I caught a bus, the bus shelter screen denied all knowledge of the bus I wanted to catch. But bustimes (and the company's own app) correctly showed it.

Reacted with an "i" for informative icon, but really it should be upside down "!"

[Coryton]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

When they work those bus things can be quite fun. A couple of years ago Sherry had a Torbay hospital appointment, and travelled by the 35A and 35C services out and back to St Marychurch. I was able to monitor her progress on the local live map from here in France!

 

It is quite interesting zooming out and seeing how buses are distributed across the UK, and where they do and don't disappear in the evening.

[Phil Parker]

2 hours ago, Coryton said:

 

Not helpful. As I said, I haven't been able to try it out in many places recently, but where I have used it I've found it very accurate apart from the occasional bus that just didn't appear at all.

Unlike the real time information at stops. The last time I caught a bus, the bus shelter screen denied all knowledge of the bus I wanted to catch. But bustimes (and the company's own app) correctly showed it.

 

That's likely to be because of bus deregulation. Around here, stops used to show West Midlands Travel buses, but not Stagecoach. WMT owned the information system...

[Fat Controller]

21 hours ago, uax6 said:

As a Bobby I like to tell the driver of any delayed train (that I have to hold for our single line) the truth about what is going on. I often start the message with 'I'm sorry driver, the wheels have fallen off the wagon again, and you are going to be sat here....' and often end up with '... so I'd get the flask out and put your feet on the dash.'

Interestingly enough management think that its a bit too chatty and that I should be more succinct and not try to make the drivers inhale their tea.

 

Andy G

I did 3 years as train crew and 22 more at Control on Eurotunnel,  so spent a fair amount of time dealing with information and announcements. The problem was often disseminating information quickly enough; things could be very fluid, and initially each train had to be contacted individually. Thankfully, the upgrade to GSM-R gave us the possibility of making 'Group Calls'; previously we had to call each 'Chef-du-Train' (equivalent to guard) individually, a process that might take 20 minutes, assuming they had the radios switched on and charged up.

Knowing what information to give is an art in itself. Too much can cause the passenger to lose interest (and sometimes the will to live...) Too little, and they start to worry about what they're not being told. 

[Coryton]

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

That's likely to be because of bus deregulation. Around here, stops used to show West Midlands Travel buses, but not Stagecoach. WMT owned the information system...

 

I can see why you'd think that, but no it was just a failure in the system. All the buses at the stop were the same bus company. I've been told that Cardiff was an early adopter of real time information displays and have paid the price with a system that's not as realiable as more modern ones. Though when they're working they happily show times for assorted companies, not just the council owned one.

 

 

[The Johnster]

On 18/09/2021 at 12:15, AY Mod said:

 

You'll find them in many Bachmann topics

Some from me...

[Edwin_m]

On 18/09/2021 at 18:18, The Johnster said:

...any other animal such as a horse or a dog which will immediately scarper off to the side and safety...

Not always.  Many years ago between Westbury and Salisbury the announcement said the train was running slowly because a dog on the line insisted on running along the track instead of getting out of the way.  

[The Johnster]

Perhaps he was related to the hare in 'Rail, Steam, and Speed'.

[Reorte]

There was an announcement of a late-running train at Stockport yesterday - due to reports of a swan on the line.

[figworthy]

45 minutes ago, Reorte said:

There was an announcement of a late-running train at Stockport yesterday - due to reports of a swan on the line.

 

I've know the M27 grind to a halt because a swan was stood on lane one.

 

Adrian

[Michael Hodgson]

10 hours ago, Coryton said:

I can't fault the ease of transferring, but the announcement that our train had failed due to ETS problems and we should transfer to the waiting 175 could probably have been done in a more layperson friendly way

 

ETS is - the Malaysian Electric Train System, right ?

[Michael Hodgson]

On 18/09/2021 at 18:18, The Johnster said:

 any other animal such as a horse or a dog which will immediately scarper off to the side and safety,

 

During Railtrack's gauge corner cracking fiasco when my commuting had changed from an hour each way to a total of five hours a day, I was a train diverted from the ECML to run via the Hertford Loop, I remember the driver announcing that the reason we had now changed from a crawl to a complete stop was that we weren't allowed to follow a horse into the tunnel. 

[Vistisen]

On 18/09/2021 at 17:21, John M Upton said:

There shouldn't be any excuse for lack of information in this day and age, all frontline staff have company mobiles and/or tablets with real time information via a number of methods and rail industry apps.  The only frontline staff who don't always have access to real time information can be drivers (all mobiles etc must be off whenever in the active driving cab of a train/loco) which can result in the bizarre situation that occured to me the other day when approaching Three Bridges, the On Board Supervisor started announcing that the splitting and stopping pattern of the train was being altered.

 

The last person to be told was me and I was driving the thing!!!!

A similar situation occured on a flight out of Stansted. My telephone 's app told me of a gate change. So I walked to the new gate. where the person at the desk told that there was no flight due to depart from there. I showed them my phone. They rang up someone, who told them that the change was just about to be posted on the departure boards!

[Colin_McLeod]

Blind them with jargon to confuse the lay person. 

"We apologise for any delay arising from this unscheduled stop. This is due to a hot box"

 

That will get the passengers talking to each other LOL

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, Vistisen said:

A similar situation occured on a flight out of Stansted. My telephone 's app told me of a gate change. So I walked to the new gate. where the person at the desk told that there was no flight due to depart from there. I showed them my phone. They rang up someone, who told them that the change was just about to be posted on the departure boards!

There used to be a good game of departure roulette played at Paddington. The half hourly service on the Greenford Branch used to run to and from there but you never knew in advance which platform it would use and that tended not to appear on the departure board until the train had arrived. The train had a fairly fast turnround and platforms 13/14 (part of the old Bishop's Road station) are a fair way from the main concourse so passengers had a bit of a mad rush scramble to get from the main concourse to 13/14 if it was going to leave from there (which more often than not it did) However, if you assumed that and it went from 11 instead you'd never know  as there were only individual platform departure screens on 13/14. If you looked at the arrivals screen though you could see which platform the train from Greenford was arriving on and, as it was normally the same two 2-car sets that ran the service,   you could normally assume that would be where it would also leave from. Occasionally though that didn't work hence the game of departure roulette. 

This particular game is played to perfection here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mReH1sxDApU

Edited September 19, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Michael Hodgson]

9 hours ago, Coryton said:

 

It is quite interesting zooming out and seeing how buses are distributed across the UK, and where they do and don't disappear in the evening.

So are they still gregarious and going round in threes then?

 

I suppose in the evening you can see if the driver's taking it home when his car breaks down - or if he's working from home in this pandemic 

[BR60103]

This sounds like Three Men in a Boat trying to find the Kingston train at Waterloo.  (Paraphrasing) Finally we went up to one driver and begged hime to be the Kingston train.  He said he supposed somebody had to do it.

(Can't find my book)

 

[Coryton]

5 hours ago, BR60103 said:

This sounds like Three Men in a Boat trying to find the Kingston train at Waterloo.  (Paraphrasing) Finally we went up to one driver and begged hime to be the Kingston train.  He said he supposed somebody had to do it.

(Can't find my book)

 

"Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.

"Nobody will ever know, on this line," we said, "what you are, or where you're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to Kingston."

"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it. Gimme the half-crown."

Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.

We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become of it."

 

(It's out of copyright so easily available from Gutenberg and the like).

[Oldddudders]

13 hours ago, Colin_McLeod said:

Blind them with jargon to confuse the lay person. 

"We apologise for any delay arising from this unscheduled stop. This is due to a hot box"

 

That will get the passengers talking to each other LOL

Jargon? It getteth worse! An HAB, which sounds like a Hot Axle Box, is in fact a Hot Armature Bearing, while a hotbox is an HAJ - Hot Axle Journal!

[Michael Hodgson]

2 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Jargon? It getteth worse! An HAB, which sounds like a Hot Axle Box, is in fact a Hot Armature Bearing, while a hotbox is an HAJ - Hot Axle Journal!

Really?  I thought the Haj was a pilgrimage to Mecca!

I'll have to stop listening to the BBC - no, the other BBC not Brown, Boveri & Cie.

[Oldddudders]

So not the Bermondsey Bucket Co.?

[Coryton]

23 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

So not the Bermondsey Bucket Co.?

 

Not the Bath Bus Company? (Bizarrely now rebranded as TOOT bus)

[melmerby]

In traffic reports on the Beeb, we regularly get:

"Traffic is at a standstill due to a police incident"

I'd love to know what the police are getting up to.

 

Would someone please have a word with the Chief Constables to stop these occurences by their officers, as they hold up the traffic.