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Of late we have become used to new trains arriving at stations ahead of schedule and seeing station duties completed and staff waiting around for the scheduled departure time.  The scale of this can be seen by looking at real time trains  - as an example, I looked at yesterday's 17:42 off Paddington to Cheltenham Spa and see ten minutes longer in intermediate stations than scheduled, yet a final arrival within one minute of time.

Come the December timetable change, faster timetable schedules will be introduced to take advantage of the faster start to stop (station to station) times that the new trains can achieve, cutting back on the current "fat" at stations, and it will be important for timekeeping and to avoid knock on delays that station duties be performed at a smart speed.

Some 76% of trains are to be sped up (GWR's figures) and that confirms the changes spread beyond just the IET trains.  Thames Valley class 387 trains have a quicker envelope than the the 165 and 166 trains they have replaced. 165, 166 and 158 trains taking over in places from 143, 150 and 153 trains with a top speed of 90 mph rather than 75 mph - and the effect already seen is that there are currently extended station waits at places like Chippenham and Melksham where such trains have longish inter-station runs on high speed capable infrastructure.

GWR are very much aware that, come December, dwell times will be reduced and the slack taken out, and are looking ahead / asking for ideas to help improve (reduce) station dwell times.  An email I received yesterday (and it appears to have had quite a wide circulation list) seeks ideas ... a meeting of the Melksham Rail User Group officers came up with some local thoughts we will be circulating for the station we represent, but there could well be other more general ideas too. Time is short - this train of input opportunity leaves on 24th July. Should new ideas that have a consensus of agreement be posted in this thread, they can be passed on to GWR (who read us anyway).  Really useful opportunity here for some win-wins!

As a first answer after my announcement... and a bit of analysis.  It's about ...

* Getting people ready at the right place in the train / on the platform and at the right station

* Getting doors released and open as soon after stopping as practical

* Allowing for most rapid / widest flows off and on

* Ensuring that stragglers don't straggle too long and that passengers who need extra time are well catered for

* Having it quickly clear when passenger loading / unloading has been completed

* Having a time efficient process for getting the train from load mode to being ready to go, ensuring the driver knows to start and actually starting.

They will also need to tighten up how they support passengers with disabilities who book assistance, and those older passengers with luggage who don't.

A couple of weeks ago, at Totnes, an elderly lady turned up in a taxi just 2 minutes before her XC train was due, with no booked assistance. She had a zimmer frame and a fold-up (heavy) mobility scooter as well as a heavy suitcase. The taxi driver just dumped her at the platform entrance and expected the platform staff (single manned at the time!) to deal with her. All credit to the staff concerned, who got the train away just one minute down, thanks to the help of other pax joining the train.

It helps that you can drive right up to the entrances to both platforms at Totnes without needing to use the footbridge.
BTW, does anyone know if the goldfish pond, that was lost to the new bridge construction, has been replaced? I used to like waiting for the train home there on a sunny evening.

My message to GWR would simply be "This is the Art of Management." There is hardly anything new in railway services being accelerated when new forms of traction come along, or when PW and signalling improvements clear lines for higher speeds, and so on. I am reminded of a paragraph in Gerry Fiennes' book "I tried to run a railway" (on page 123 if you want to read it yourself!)

"We set out to teach homo sapiens erectus railwayanus to abandon his casual habits and to run trains to time. The first task was with ourselves. Will officers kindly instruct their stations that trains will no longer wait for passengers strolling down the hill or from one platform to another? Will officers kindly instruct their Controls not to stop trains where they are not booked to stop for anyone but the Sovereign? Will officers no longer stop trains for themselves? Will the engineers kindly keep off the fast lines during "express" hours? Will officers get out and about and encourage louder whistles, more noisy slamming of doors, more dramatic waving of flags?"

That was written about the railways in the 1960s and, whilst many of the points raised are no longer an issue on today's railway, the basic underlying point of making sure that managers manage effectively is just as salient now as it has ever been.

I know a great deal of time and effort is being put into trying to make the December timetable work (is it happening in December again now?  I thought Broadgage had heard different?), from educating staff through to tightening up procedures and having a 'command centre' approach to the initial period after introduction.  This 'asking for suggestions' email is obviously one part of that.

Not everything will run smoothly, I'm sure - and launching a new timetable right in the middle of Winter gives rise to other external factors that might not happen if you launched in, say, March.  GWR management is taking a very proactive approach to sorting out potential problems though, which is encouraging.

The best thing they could do to improve dwell times is to put more effort into ensuring that trains are the right way round, with First Class at the Up end, so that we get rather less of the amusing display of passengers running back and forth up and down the platform. At the very least, the worst possible configuration of a 10-car train with First Class in carriages 4, 5, 6, and 7 should be actively avoided, as the reality is that Standard Class passengers are accustomed to waiting in the middle of the platform at most stations, and presenting the centre of the platform with two kitchen doors flanked by two First Class doors on either side is inevitably going to lengthen dwell times.

The carriage lettering in those awful 5-car sets (can we please give them to another operator and order some proper trains instead?) should be sorted out so that A-E are always in the unit at the Down end and G-L always in the unit at the Up end -- I understand that this can be changed on the fly and is not difficult.

Reliably reducing station dwell times is going to be a considerable challenge, as much due to political correctness as due to technical reasons.

"Mother with 2 special needs children left behind"
"90 year old war veteran left on wrong platform"
"nasty train man let train go when he could see me coming"

Whilst IETs have the merit that passengers cant leave the doors open, other aspects of the design tend to slow boarding.
I seems to me that IET dwell times are often extended, but that the superior acceleration away from each stop usually compensates for this.
I have observed an IET stopped at Taunton for over 5 minutes, mainly due to conflicts over outsized luggage, cycles,  and giant baby carriages "no one came to help me" and "where is the guard's van"

Arrival at Paddington was well within time despite the extended dwell time at Taunton. If however the service was to be accelerated, the on time arrival at London seems doubtful.

broadgage has indeed heard otherwise, but I should stress that this was rumour and not any official source.
I doubt that the planned changes will be COMPLETLY postponed, or abandoned, too much loss of face ! Much more likely IMO is a gradual or phased introduction, with very, very little in the first phase taking place this December.

Wider use of the new-ish zone markings on platforms will help enormously, if passengers know that their reserved seat will be through the door at a specified place on the platform. The removal of practically all slam-door trains in the region is another major step forward - if the door is locked when you arrive, you ain't getting on, and staff no longer have up to 16 doors to close before a train can leave the station. The speed out of the blocks for the IETs is certainly impressive.

The Bristol Post (https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/gwr-temple-meads-london-paddington-3109427) is getting all excited about the December timetable.

I am too. It’s been a long time in coming where we will finally get to see the benefits of electrification and the new IET trains. They may not be to everyone’s taste but they really do shift.

Slight variation on what happens at stations. I believe that it has been said elsewhere on the forum that when the new timetable is fully implemented there will not be a lot of slack running into Paddington. My thought (nightmare?) is on the stretch between Heathrow Junction and Paddington, what happens when we have people running around on the track (a not unknown occurrence)? How long will it take to recover the timetable to something close to normal with so little slack in the system.
I realise this is not the objective of the questionnaire and there is not a prior (?) solution, but presumably there will be some contingency planning, especially for people stuck on trains possibly for a lengthy period.

I suspect there is confirmatory evidence in this quote by TonyK from the Bristol Post - not that the Bristol Post is an official source!

There's one thing that would help - eliminate dividing trains mid-journey. One of the regular trains on my evening commute is the 18-57 ex-Reading stopping train for Didcot Parkway, which arrives as a 12 car train, "sheds" the last 4 and continues as an 8 car train to Didcot. The dividing procedure almost always takes longer than timetabled (although no longer as bad as the early days of Electrostar use, when 20 minutes was not uncommon), and this on a train which probably is the one that is the poorest time-keeper on the Reading - Goring leg of my journey. Yet while it fumbles with the manoeuvre, another stopping service usually arrives alongside from Paddington and terminates. Why not put the extra coaches on that one?

(No doubt someone out there will know and tell me......!)

Introducing the 4tph to Bristol won’t happen in December.  That’s been the plan since the early part of the year, as I mentioned in my first post regarding the December timetable in another thread.  It’s whether all the other planned introductions happen at once or in stages.

I don't "know" but I can glean things from RTT  ;D

The four cars that are dropped off go ECS to Reading depot so they are clearly not immediately needed for another train.

The 1857 RDG DID is the 1819 from Paddington, which stops only at Maidenhead and Twyford.

The 1858 arrival is the 1757 ex-PAD which stops at all stations except Acton Main Line and Hanwell & Elthorne.

I suspect the Powers That Be expect a higher loading to Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading on the 1819 fast train from PAD than on the 1759 stopper, so that is why the four cars go to Reading only on the express service. Whether or not the actual loading bear out Powers That Be's wisdom is something that you can answer better the I can!

All that said, the various TOCs that now operate what used to be known as British Railways Southern Region have been splitting and joining portions of trains since Noah was a lad and usually without delay, so there is nothing wrong with the principle itself. Perhaps GWR staff need to up their game in the matter?

I beg to differ on the principle; I don't know about the particular cases you mention. 

The trunk of the GWR network - the line out of Paddington - requires as many seats as possible (at least at busiest times) and everything needs to be 9 or 10 cars. But as the train get further out in some directions, passengers thin out somewhat. One option is to turn back alternate trains at [choose place] but then that leaves a service below optimum frequency beyond, but another is to split and that at its crudest (turning 5 carriages around) makes financial sense. At its best, it allows you to "feather" and provide through London services to new destinations, perhaps replacing local trains. 

Keeping such trains on schedule? Simples - please, Mr DfT, don't tighten the SLC specification for them beyond what is sensible. You are not looking at dwell times at perhaps a dozen stations along the way - just at one. And at that one you are replacing a connectional change ... which would take a few minutes and would be less attractive to the customers.

Where might some interesting hourly car services end up? Weston-super-mare.  Yeovil Pen Mill.  Hereford.  Paignton ... Westbury 2 trains per hour to Paddington, one via Bedwyn and one via Didcot.  Perhaps the Weston service joining with a service from South Wales at Bristol Parkway.  But all this way, way beyond what this thread is about which is ensuring excellent dwell times all along the routes from December.

Leaving aside any late running resulting from Network Rail infrastructure issues, you don't have to be a genius to realise that a lot (?most) of other delay is generated by passengers not being in the correct place on the platform to board as quickly as possible.

An obvious help in this area would be to make better use of the CIS screens in conjunction with the new platform zonal markings; certainly at EXD the presentation of train information is extremely variable and much more detailed for GWR services than for XC.

I would have the information presented in a partially tabular format:

12:45 GWR service to London Paddington               (On Time/Expected hh:mm)
This train has 9 coaches
This train will also call at Taunton, Westbury & Reading
Coach ID          Platform Zone          Class                 Facilities
     A                       1                      First          (Wheelchair Symbol)
     B                       2                      First
     C                       3                   Standard           (Cycle Symbol)
     D                       4                   Standard
etc, etc.....

Would all passengers please check their reservations and move to the correct platform zone.
Passengers without reservations please move to platform zone(s) xxxxx
(It is surely possible for train managers/the booking system to provide advance notice of the location of the majority of unreserved seats. Do trains still have unreserved coaches?)

And don't forget to use the station PA to ensure passengers fully understand where they need to go.

Unless of course the current technology is completely incapable of doing this!  :(

I have noticed that the CIS is providing more detail sometimes than it did six months ago, such as "Last Reported". It should not be beyond the wit of man to have a summary of which coach is going to stop at which zone - if it is, ask a woman to do it. It wouldn't be needed at Paddington, but I am sure the modern kit is capable.

I think you're overestimating the extent to which passengers will (a) bother to read and (b) believe the information on information displays. It's much better to ensure that trains are in a consistent formation.

You also will struggle to get many people to stand out in some numbered zone beyond the end of the canopies – even if it's not raining, the end of the canopy has a psychological effect. Consequently, the easiest passengers to put out there are those with reservations (and the argument then goes that reservations in Standard Class should not be available in carriages D-H, and should only become available in C once B and J are completely reserved).

I think passengers do try to stand near where their reservation is but the 10 coach IET comes in with first class at each end of the train because a unit is the wrong way round. The last time it happened to me the Newton Abbot indicator listed the coaches as 1-10 and not lettered.

The screens will always list the coaches as 1-10, 1-9 or 1-5 even though the actual carriages are lettered.

At first glance that seems illogical but the coaches have to keep a static letter for the reservation system and things like the quiet coach.   Even if you could guarantee each train was made up correctly things like diversions and reversals would soon put pay to it.

It also depends on the information posted about the train formation being correct.  Only 50% success on my recent journeys so that I now resort to waiting in the centre of the platform until the train arrives and I can ascertain the formation.

Yes that has certainly been an issue.

Sort of understandable when first starting out on a journey but there should be a routine that someone (train manager?) checks the screens and advises control if they are wrong.

I believe a system is being/has been rolled out that allows all TMs to update formation information of their train as needed. Hopefully as this is more often utilised information will improve in quality.
 

I reckon the trains should be able to report that kind of thing - formation, where they are, what's run out, as well as train system faults etc - all on their own.

There is such a system. Hundreds of signals are available from every 80x and can be viewed if you have access, which GWR control staff do.

One issue causing extended dwell times is that some classic HST sets have a separate cycle compartment in coach A that isn't accessible from the rest of the train.  This causes confusion, passengers with bikes trying to board other parts of the train, then made to get off and go to the end coach, and then walk back to get on another part of the train.  If all the classics were like that, cyclists would at least get used to this train layout - but they're not.

I think there should be a campaign to encourage passengers not to stand in the vestibule area unless absolutely necessary.  I was boarding a crowded HST at Bristol recently, and it took ages to get everyone on, fighting their way past people who got on and just blocked the door area.  The funny thing was, when I eventually got into the carriage, there were seats for all, and it wasn't that crowded after all.

The other idea would be to have drivers open the doors on local services.  (I'm not going to suggest that they close them too, as I know that will start a much bigger debate.)

Input from Melksham Rail User Group (http://www.mrug.org.uk)


Dwell time at Melksham??  Yes - reducing it could help.  The single line is already very busy and saving even a few seconds here and there will help not only with the single line itself, but also help to reduce trains waiting / blocking the mainlines while they wait at both ends.

There's customer benefit here too:

* we've had several incidents of people getting off the train at Melksham believing themselves to be at Chippenham or Trowbridge.  Having a sign that says "Melksham" they can see as the look out from / step off the train could help.

* in wet weather, most passengers prefer to wait under cover and dash across to the train when it stops. We could do with the train stopping near the cover, not right up the exposed new end of the platform.

In strikes me that there are quite a few stations like this, and this may just be confirmation bias, but resignalling projects that end up moving the stop markers tend not to consider how the changes affect passengers (a great example is the changes that were made at Temple Meads as part of last years resignalling where for some of the platforms the stopping zone for the shorter DMU's seem to be much further from the subway than what they used to be).

Often done to reduce the risk of stop short incidents with longer trains.

So are you suggesting that drivers are incapable of stopping a train in a platform unless its got "car stop" signs?

How did they manage in engine and coaches days when an express train could typically load to anything between 8 and 12?

In steam days it was the water column that was the train stop where a water column was present otherwise it was the BIG station name board, the beginning of the platform ramp or the 'PASSENGERS MUST CROSS THE LINE BY THE FOOTBRIDGE' cast iron plate. Oh, don't you remember the board crossings where mums pushed their babies in their prams escorted by a member of station staff across the running lines ?

I had an interesting and informative example today, using the 1240 Gloucester to Frome between Oldfield Park and Bath.

The train display at Oldfield Park (and that in itself is something new) announced the train on time at 1403 when I arrived at about 1355. After the train left Keynsham it was reporting 1 minute late.

The train arrived and sat there for what seemed to be an inordinate length of time but was probably around 20 seconds - certainly not less. When we arrived at Bath there was another lengthy delay before the doors opened. Here I noticed that we had a crew of four - driver, RPO, train manager and what appeared to be a trainee TM having some on the job training. After being given RA by the dispatch staff the train sat there for a bit longer and eventually got away 1.5m down.

When I got home I checked what happened subsequently on RTT. 4.75 down by BOA, same at Trowbridge, a minute knocked off the 3 min booked at Westbury so now down to 3 late, but probably missed its path at Clink Road because it passed there 14 late, and was 13 late arriving st Frome.

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C21495/2019/07/23/advanced

From what I witnessed at OLF and Bath I suspect that most if not all of the delay was caused by not opening the doors quickly enough.

It has crossed my mind before that, in 56 years of consciously using London Underground (ie. doing it by myself and not having parents around to do things for me), I have never known a train arrive at a station and the doors not opening immediately the train has come to rest. (You sometimes have to wait for them to close the bloody things at Edgware Road, but that's another matter...)

Why does it take so long to release the doors on the Big Railway, when LT appear to have sussed out that dwell times are affected adversely if you don't open them pronto?

(Rant nearly over - I shall now go and find Graham's "Weymouth Blockade" thread and grump a bit more over there. Perhaps its the heat...  :) )

Not incapable, just that if you have (for example) one stop car marker for 2/3/4 carriages and another for 5/6 carriages, then if the driver rarely drives 5/6 car trains they are more likely to make a mistake and stop at the 2/3/4 car marker.  That was the scenario at Burnham, where there were several stop short incidents over a period of a few years.  That risk was eliminated by making an 'S' car board for all trains at the end of the platform.  If the train was formed of two carriages that then meant a long walk back.  Fortunately there are very few trains of that length now.

I'm guessing a similar decision has been made at Melksham, and with a variety of train lengths now calling at the extended platform, they've decided to just provide the one stopping point at the end of the platform to eliminate any stop short risk?

In the olden days (actually not that olden as it was happening until the early 90s on what are now GWR's routes), little regard to the safety of passengers was taken, with it being considered perfectly fine to stop a 9-carriage train at a 2-carriage platform with the doors of the whole train being able to be opened at any time before, during, or after the station stop.  If someone fell out of the back then it was up to the guard to spot them.  If a driver stopped short then they didn't even bother to report it as long as no harm was done.

No doubt the modern way is much safer, but sometimes at the expense of passenger convenience.

Newport P4 has an oddly positioned 2/3 car stop.  3 carriage trains (and quite a lot of them are, that use that platform) have their rear carriage on the section of platform with no shelter, and it's also the most curved bit which makes train dispatch more difficult for the conductor.  There are 4-6 and 8-10 car stops much further down the platform.

Some decisions on stop boards may seem strange, and there are definitely some improvements that can be made. 

Additional considerations that might not seem obvious include sighting of the signal, ease of dispatch, location of track equipment (TPWS grids and AWS magnets) not just in the direction the train is heading but also at the other end of the train if a reversing movement is either likely or possible.

I can accept that people make mistakes (and indeed if you could upload photos direct to this forum I'd upload one of mine taken from by the car stop at Didcot platform 3 where a notice reads: "Driver - are you stopping at Radley?"). However, a driver knoing how many coaches he's got behind him is surely one of the basic functions of railway operations. Are we taking recruits from the street and training them for 18-odd months without teaching them to know what they've got behind them before they start off?


I think that your remarks do a great disservice, to put it mildly, to the generations of railwaymen that went before you. Try walking in to the retired railway staff meeting (1st Wednesday of the month, lunchtime, at the Knights Templar on the site of Bristol Goods) and telling them what little regard they had for the safety of passengers in their day, and tell us all how you got on!

Central locking was unheard until about 30 or so years ago (and the railways have been around now for nearly 200 years). Very few peoplw fell off trains, and if they did they probably improved the gene pool anyway, because anyone with an IQ of more than 2 can suss out that opening the door on a fast moving train is a bit of an unwise thing to do. But then we got the Compensation Culture where it's always somebody else's fault, so now if someone falls off a train its the railways fault for not locking them in. Or when someone gets killed on a level crossing doing a zig zag its the railways fault for letting them do it. This sort of thing is not "health & safety" in its truest sense; it's back covering to keep the insurers happy.


This thread is entitled: "Helping to keep trains on schedule when timetables tighten up in December 2019" and finds its origin in GWR asking for suggestions to reduce dwell times in stations. Your replies appear not to address this at all, but to put forward excuses for maintaining the status quo.

If you make passengers walk around platforms to get on a train, you will increase dwell times. Just stand on Temple Meads platform 9 when a 9 or 10-car IET is on a through service to the west, see it stop what appears to be half way to Bedminster, then watch the passengers walk down the platform to get on. Try coming up the stairs to platforms 5 to 8 and see the passengers generally milling about within a few feet of the stairwell. Then watch a northbound 4-car XC train come in and stop half way to Dr Days and then watch the passengers walk half way to Dr Days after it. Whilst you are doing that keep an eye on the seconds ticking by on the clock, and also make a note of the fact that the opther half of the platform, the one with the differet number, is not being used by anything else whilst all this malarkey is going on.

Then tell me again that all this is being done with the safety of the public at its centre, unlike how it was in the bad old days.  ::)

I think we had something like three stop shorts at Burnham within two years which led to the change there.  On each of those occasions nobody was injured, however I remember a blind passenger falling from a train at Reading many years before when a train wasn't accommodated on the platform and injured as a result, so the risk is there and proven to potentially lead to problems.

A driver might make over 150000 station stops during their career, so the occasional mistake is inevitable.  I don't think it's sensible to have risk where it can be easily and sensibly be eliminated, but a sensible compromise has to be reached and (as my follow up post stated), there are definitely improvements that can be made - possibly at Melksham, as I haven't been to the station since it had its platform lengthened.


I was not suggesting that staff had little regard for safety, and certainly want to clarify what I meant if that's how it came across.  I was suggesting that the safety culture was completely different to today.  I have worked on the railways since the 1980s so have seen it change first hand.  Be that by eliminating trains without central door locking (which, by the way, have existed for a lot longer than 30 years - Class 303s were introduced 60 years ago for example), or the investigation and reporting procedure for incidents such as stop short, overruns, wrong side door release.

As a youth I was on two trains where the door has opened at speed, by which I mean over 50mph.  Once by kids playing about on a first generation DMU with door handles on the inside of the carriage, and another time when the door was on the latch on an InterCity departure from Coventry, unbeknown to me stood in the vestibule, and another train passed it at speed.  Along with our blind passenger, that could have caught out people without learning difficulties, and of course we should have a duty to protect those that do have learning difficulties - whatever it might do to the 'gene pool'.

I have suggested before that perhaps we have gone too far - in other words I agree with your compensation culture argument to a point - but there is no doubt that the steady elimination of risk through work practices and better technology have helped to reduce the number of incidents, and therefore travelling by rail is much safer than ever.  Regardless of how intelligent you are.


Not my intention to come across as making excuses to retain the status quo, simply to help explain why some of the decisions come about which might not be clear or obvious to the average reader of the forum.  That's the main reason for me being here and, as far as I know, is still encouraged?

Hopefully the zonal system will help get passengers waiting at the right part of the platform, at places like Bristol Temple Meads especially, where platform sharing will of course become more and more common in the coming years.  Though perhaps it should be looked at again in the case of XC services and other shorter trains?  I don't visit there often enough to have an opinion.

Agreed. I've been on several train journeys in the last year or so where the train is pulling in and stopped and yet I still don't know what station it is due to a lack of signage. Luckily the audio visual on board announcements tell me this isn't my stop.

The argument of "single stopping point at Melksham in case the driver forgets how many he has on" would carry more weight if the very same "unit" trains and drivers routinely stopped forward at Trowbridge and Westbury irrespective of number of carriages

Edit to add ... on sleeping on it, that reads as a very glib answer to a very thorough review from Industry Insider.   I do also wonder if we have "gone too far" ... and I look at the risk of stopping short and wonder if the effects are mitigated by checks by the train manager before he opens the doors.

Also noting that at Melksham the new platform section where the 2 car train now stops is narrower than the main section and there's more of a crowding issues / more people having to walk along closer to the train that would be the case if it stopped near the station entrance and shelter.

I'm sure someone perverse went around South Wales putting the car stop markers in the most inappropriate places possible. The 2-car stop marker on platform 3 at Cardiff Queen Street ensures that the train is sufficiently onto the narrow part of the platform by the cafe that the waiting hordes funnelling in from the wide bit of the platform block anyone getting off from getting to the stairs. It would clearly have been too obvious to put the 2-car marker level with the cafe entrance; there's even a wall there to mount it on...

Dawlish is another station where the station building and canopy are at the back end of the Up platform and the regular 2-3 coach units stop at the front end. Station staff are always requesting pax to 'move up the platform' as the train approaches.

For what it's worth, there was a late quarry train (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H10224/2019/07/23/advanced) going the other way. But it does strike me as odd that Fairwood Junction to Clink Road Junction isn't four-tracked. It's only a couple of miles with pretty much nothing in the way, and the two-track section there just introduces needless opportunities for things to go wrong.

There are of the order of 4 trains each way per hour through that stretch and noting there are layby tracks at both Frome and Westbury, the issue of slow trains and fast trains mixed eating up lots of paths is much less than elsewhere.  If the Bristol Metro were be to extended to Frome you would be adding an extra train each way, ditto if that were in combination with turning the Heart of Wessex to Hourly as far as Yeovil Pen Mill. To some extent, those extras would replace the SWR fillers between Yeovil and Westbury.  I suspect that 4 tracking between Swindon and Didcot, or between Didcot and Oxford, would have a better case, and that redoubling Chippenham to Trowbridge would also be a better investment.

Interestingly, the Westbury to Frome corridor along the railway looks bland on a map ... but there's history there. A relief road just to the north of the railway, linking the A36 to the West Wilts Industrial Estate would move (road) traffic from the South Coast to the industrial area - and through traffic headed further north too - away from the pinch points of Haynes Road and West End in Westbury, which have congestion, vibration and air quality issues.

Yes, and there were of course other isolated examples such as the Waterloo & City.

But until around 30 years ago, coinciding with the demise of the last first generation DMUs and older EMU stock, the overwhelming majority of passenger services in the UK were operated by slam door stock without central locking.

I walked past the cab of a Southern 455 recently and noticed a digital display which showed something along the lines of "Number of Cars". On this occasion it was correctly showing the number 8. Is this common on other trains and TOCs?

The one time I have experienced the doors not opening immediately was at Birmingham New Street. The TM had tried valiantly, but in the face of threatened violence decided that it may be prudent to stop trying to explain to the obnoxious passenger that he really wasn't exempt from needing a ticket. The said passenger sat down with a smug grin, his battle won - or so he thought. He stood relatively patiently in the line of passengers wanting to get off, asking loudly as time progressed why the doors weren't opening. Too late, it dawned on him that he might be the reason, and he started a comedy sprint down the carriage. He came running back, pursued by two BTP officers. He was led away in handcuffs to loud cheers and applause.