Great Western Coffee Shop

This is large rock in a small pond to see where the ripples go.

It's prompted by two things, my experience as a member of Taplow Rail User Group and manning our office when the booking clerk is not there and secondly by Alan Williams comments in his piece in March Modern Railways.

We have on a number of occasions had people turn up at the station who didn't know quite where the trains went, how to get a ticket from the machine or if unable to do so get a permit to travel. Some didn't know about the marvelous Travelcard or if they did didn't know it covered  heavy rail. buses and trams as well as the tube.

If the indicators aren't working the London timetables are well up  platform 4 and the one for Reading is on the island platform.

Alan Williams commnets that at Middelsborough there are three maps none of which gives an accurrate picture of the current National Rail netwrok. Admittedly one is an old North Eastern tile map, which to be fair does have a "stern comment" to the effect that not all lines shown are open, the other two are TOC maps Northern and Transpennine niether of which show ECML to London.

He also says that the main board at Manchester Picadilly no longr shows indivdual trains with their destinations and intermeadiate stops but an alphabetical list of stations and the next rain.  Even though I know the geograhy of the Railnetwork fairly well I think i'd struggle with that.

So "How do you Make a Journey by Train?"

 


 

My experience of this is, no matter how much signage you erect, no matter how many network diagrams, interactive maps, simple to use station finders, clear and accurate direction boards and self-help systems you install, the first thing some many a depressing majority of people will do on arrival at any railway station is to ask.

They'll ask the station cleaner, they'll ask other passengers, they'll ask the foreign student working in the Costa Coffee outlet; they'll ask a blooming pigeon first, rather than try to figure it out for themselves. And if they can get onto the platform (at barrierless stations) they'll ask the guy with the table tennis bat waving to the driver just as he pulls out, always choosing the most inopportune moment to do so. As a very last resort they'll queue for a ticket and ask there.

I'm sorry, but the only sensible way round this is to employ more staff at stations. They can even be "civilians", leaving train despatch personnel to get on with their professional job, but things are never going to change until there's actually someone around that people can ask. And sadly, I doubt it's ever goiing to happen. Porters belong to a bygone age.

At Chippenham, there's a notice at the main entrance instructing disabled passengers who require assistance crossing the line [all trains there depart from the island platform, and the only way of accessing it is across a footbridge] to ask a member of the station staff. Where are both the station staff invariably to be found? On the island platform.