please empty your brain below

Good Lord, you learn something everyday... I never even knew there was such a word as 'illuminable' before now...

Down the other end of the District line, Turnham Green is pretty much the same as Bow Road;
Shitty Ticket Hall indicator
Big LED screen replacing little light up one with no extra info.
Two minutes warning about the next train.
The only difference is that at Turnham Green westbound, EVERYONE needs to know where the next train is going, so at least that screen is marginally more useful.

My local station, West Kensington, has nothing. No boards at all. Very very frustrating.
And Earls Court, a crazy busy station with four platforms, has only the really old school indicators: a load of destinations and an arrow pointing which one the next train goes to. Definitely no indication of time.

I like the system they have on the Brussels Metro whereby each station and intermediate section is shown on a linear map and lights tell you where all the trains are on that map. You can tell instantly where the next train currently is and make an estimate of how long it'll take to get to you.

With SatNav pretty much ubiquitous these days, why are they waiting for cabling?

SatNav doesn't work underground - or in buildings - or in leafy woods - or even in rain sometimes.

Dont knock the old school:
1) its taken me 44 years to work out how Earls Court Station works
2) the announcements on the H&C line have a lovely cadence: Wood Lane in 2 minutes, xxx in 3 minutes, etc.... the whole line has a 70s feel to it..
But for frustration, see Edgware Road, where the trains on the middle platforms can go in either direction, and there are no announcements or indicators.

1932 version -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/247...533987/sizes/l/


As far as I'm aware most of the District Line east of Mile End is above ground...or only temporarily below ground.
Do the military use SatNav that can't read in the rain/leafy woods?

The military do indeed use GPS which is like satnav. If its anything like their comms equipment used to be then it works fine in leafy woods. You just use a mast that is higher than the roof canopy.

The District line DOES use on-board GPS for trains to deduce which stations they are at but obviously this is supplemented by other means for use undergound. However this isn't part of the signalling system which is safety critical.

Southern Railway and others use GPS to detect trains being at stations with short platforms and preventing doors incorrectly opening. Unfortunately it cannot work out which track it is on which is a bit unfortunate when they have a long platform in one direction and a short platform in the opposite direction.

It is also used on overground (small o) trains for the in train announcements. You can sometimes see this when the announcement is simply wrong (often wrong direction assumed at start of journey) and then it picks up the GPS signal and corrects itself.

And of course the buses use various means including GPS to locate themselves.

Turnpike Lane southbound also falls under the 1a category, 1b works just fine.

Ani wrote: Seconds? On the tube? I've never seen them.

Well Ani, I hope you've seen them now..

Southern Railway and others use GPS to detect trains being at stations with short platforms and preventing doors incorrectly opening.

Even more unfortunately it doesn't work in the part of Victoria with the shopping centre above (which is the half almost all of Southern's trains use) and has to manually overridden, which is why it takes ages for them to release the doors there.

The next train indicators at Ruislip Manor have taken a major step back from the morning rush hour service offered in the 1970s.

This comprised a member of staff inserting one of several painted wooden board into a slot showing the next service (e.g. all stations to Baker Street; fast train to Aldgate - not stopping between Harrow on the Hill and Finchley Road; an occasional Piccadilly service, etc.)

35 years ago seems like yesterday.

If the signalling and cabling can't handle the additional information that is shown by these displays, you'd think that they'd have had the sense to upgrade the signals and cables first, wouldn't you?

I suppose signals and cables aren't as visible as the information displays. It's far better to invest in fancy gadgets rather than work out sensible (but less PR-friendly) priorities, isn't it?

Andrew: By signalling, they mean the entire train control system for the network, which the displays are generally fed by. Replacing this on the District/Circle/Met/H&C network will be an enormous project, and is going to cost the best part of a billion pounds.

Whether they should have waited to install the displays is a point of debate, but if you're suggesting they could easily have brought forward the re-signalling, the answer is a big fat no.

If the policy is to install new NTIs on upgrade, even if not capable of use, then Wood Lane should have them. Not consistant policy.

Wood Green had a new trick the other day - it had got the idea that there was an Uxbridge train was imminent, so that was permanently displayed on the top line, while the train that was actually about to turn up was displayed as the second. Bravo!

Golders Green has new style displays that the signalling can't feed effectively. It was the only Northern Line station where I had ever seen a lightbox-type NTI. Mind you, I have known the displays on the Edgware branch of the Northern Line to be lying all the way to Camden Town occasionally. But then again, the Northern Line is not really a line, due to its central branches - that makes it two lines as far as I'm concerned.











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