please empty your brain below
Matthew Somerville's app,
http://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/
takes its information from TfL, who could obviously offer the same system as Brussels if they wished to.
Matthew notes that 'some H&C and Circle stations are missing from the TfL feed'. These would be Goldhawk Road - Royal Oak where you (DG) note that there are no Next Train Indicators.
At the bottom of the staircase was a display showing info from all 4 platforms. This was achieved by means of 4 video cameras, trained on each of the platform departure boards, combined and live-streamed to a TV!
dg writes: It's still there, and still in use.
I sometimes wait for H & C at Barking and as you say, they spring it on you.
(My other gripe is District Line trains at Upminster - I find out which platform so late that by the time I get the lift down, or even the stairs, it's gone and I have to go up again - which is getting harder as I get older - I know I could see at least when one is coming, but have forgotten which app does it).
I never use the H&C line, but it's the impression given by the maps!
Talking of lightboxes, Harrow on the Hill has them. Pretty, but utterly useless, other than to tell you which of the two platforms the train will arrive at!
I imagine that it must be really difficult for tourists if they ever get this far up the line. I often 'do my good deed for the day', explaining the intricacies of the inner 'cut and cover' services!
I wonder if the indicators, being linked directly in to the signalling, however ropey, give more accurate information than the apps at times of disruption. Anecdotally, I suspect they don't, from what I have seen and heard. But they might. Difficult to check because you never know when disruption is going to happen.
It's all down to money and managers-who-can-get-details-right. I suspect both are in short supply.
The H&c and Met do both serve Liverpool Street and Kings Cross, but this light box is at Upton Park, which has not seen a Metropolitan Line train for a quarter of a century.
But if you want quirky information displays, my local station is capable of displaying the same train on three platforms at once, and also of telling you that a train of is expected to arrive 45 minutes ago - that is to say, at is shown as running 15 minutes late, when its scheduled time is already an hour in the past.
whatever tech they use for the busses, I hope they're not rolling it out anywhere else. Sure, 90% of the time it seems to work alright, but the other 10% of the time it takes a bus 15 minutes to go from "1 minute" to "due" to vanishing off the display without ever being seen.
Still it's nothing compared to what I saw in Ireland some seven years ago. There the indicator boards were stuck on the timetable. The published timetable. Not even updated for planned engineering work. And when everything went belly up at Cork, with trains late or cancelled, no indication there was anything wrong at all!
So it's not all bad!
Actually, all the indicators have the "feature" of telling you where the next three trains are going, even if they are all going to the same place. What you really need to know is where the next train to each possible destination is.
But they don't match the capabilities now expected of them. No idea when the next train is coming, where trains 2 and 3 are going to appear etc. No ability to report information about delays. They were a solution from a different age.
I live in the burbs of the North now, and even my local railway station with its two trains an hour has a display that can tell me far more than a lightbox.
By the same token, the digital eastbound Next Train Indicator at Bow Road is also not fit for purpose.
There is a station on my line which gives you information up to 119 minutes ahead (239 minutes on Sundays), despite there being only one possible destination, and which platform the train will go from is obvious as there is only one. Another station on the same line can give you as little as three minutes' warning despite having 19 platforms and dozens of possible destinations.
In some cases (eg Gt Portland St EB) the short notice is simply because the system cannot be sure which train will arrive first until it has crossed a junction. In other cases I suspect the interface between the train tracking system and the DMIs is distinctly flakey. The south side of the Circle line seems particularly unreliable, with St James's Park ironically often getting it totally wrong even as the train arrives.
Where two (or more!) routes converge before the station, 'the system' cannot tell which train is next until the points are locked for that route and the train is on the relevant track circuit (not sure about the second bit - repeating what I was told from my Underground days), then the indicators take a feed from the relevant 'programming machine' (this too may be out of date).
Doesn't explain all the other irregularities, but may give an understanding why you wait also at Aldgate East for a next train indication too...
In certain places where a stop is close to a starting point the system displays the scheduled time until the bus is started up and then moves. This is why you get buses merrily counting down minute by minute and then the final 1 minute lasts for however long it takes the driver to actually start driving the bus. I see this all the time in Ilford where a lot of buses start from Hainault St stand. I've also been badly caught out where a bus is shown, via a phone app, as due in 2 mins but it actually whizzes up the road. Again a problem of a mismatch between the scheduled time being displayed and the bus being driven at rocket speed out of Turnpike Lane bus stn and zapping through the traffic lights. A not nice 20 minute wait then resulted!
I-Bus / Countdown is pretty decent but it has its foibles and it's not easy to work out how to resolve them given "real life" out on the roads throws up so many variables that can cause delays.
Many people need to be much closer to them to read them. This is important when services can switch platforms.
Our local South West Trains station has the newer set on one platform and the older style on another. I can read the old ones from the platform with the new ones even when I'm too far from the new indicator to be able to read it on the platform I'm using.
I've also noticed that the two sets of indicators display the train information differently. In fact the new ones show less information about the first train than the old ones. You have to wait for a longer to see it all. Very odd.
Hayes & Harlimgton had such displays - similar to those used by the signal staff themselves - when I used to use the station, 15 years ago. Probably replaced by something less informative now.
The line diagram on the bridge still shows H&C to Barking as peak only too despite the re-tiling.
Check the photo...
http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/tfl-trialling-new-battery-operated-countdown-screens/
TfL were trialling an e-ink bus stop display as well recently.
http://www.lurs.org.uk/meetings.htm
perhaps DG should go along and heckle?
“Train Describers,” by Ross Deacon BSc (Hons) MBA CEng FIRSE MIET Principal Engineer - Signalling, Capital Programmes Directorate, London Underground.
Mr Deacon will discuss the development of Train Describer Systems from the early years through to the more modern passenger information systems that we have today.
Non Members may attend (if I recall correctly), but you may want to check with the Society first if you plan to go.
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