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Confusing PIS on the Tyne and Wear Metro

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Bletchleyite

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Had a ride on this this morning (and if Merseyrail is a textbook S-Bahn, this is a textbook U-Bahn), and almost didn't get on the right train because the station PIS showed a destination short of the final one I wanted (South Hylton).

It appears the cause of this is that if two trains are due relatively soon it only shows one line rather than the full thing - but inexplicably it shows the "via" instead of the "to".

Why on earth is this? It seems a very poor piece of design.
 
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Bletchleyite

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Turns out I can answer this myself by way of a not very clearly displayed notice board at Central stating that it was an issue and was not deliberate.

As an aside with regard to the Metro, has anyone been to both Gateshead and Hamburg Hbf-Nord? They do have a similar feel to one another - almost oddly Soviet. Probably the red tiles and high ceilings that do it.
 

Jozhua

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Almost missed my train today because I thought the Station was actually "Monument" lol
 

jkkne

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The Passenger boards have been constantly failing since the new system was introduced last year.

Not sure if the underlying issue but it’s causing confusion even for seasoned commuting veterans

Gateshead Station, along with four lane ends, regent centre are indeed very Soviet-seque. I really like the high ceilings and bare concrete design. Plus there’s some lovely artwork at Gateshead, particularly the space themed collage in the Newcastle bound tunnel.
 

ModernRailways

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Had a ride on this this morning (and if Merseyrail is a textbook S-Bahn, this is a textbook U-Bahn), and almost didn't get on the right train because the station PIS showed a destination short of the final one I wanted (South Hylton).

It appears the cause of this is that if two trains are due relatively soon it only shows one line rather than the full thing - but inexplicably it shows the "via" instead of the "to".

Why on earth is this? It seems a very poor piece of design.

As you mentioned it wasn't deliberate. They're not working properly, Nexus spent £12 million on replacing the old signalling system with a brand new 'RTMS', however from what I've heard they bought the barebones package and as such they're now having to pay out to get it all fixed up which is harder now the tech is actually in place and being used 20 hours a day. Any sort of disruption/line closure where trains are turning short of their destination throws the entire thing into chaos as is evident.
 

Bletchleyite

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As you mentioned it wasn't deliberate. They're not working properly, Nexus spent £12 million on replacing the old signalling system with a brand new 'RTMS', however from what I've heard they bought the barebones package and as such they're now having to pay out to get it all fixed up which is harder now the tech is actually in place and being used 20 hours a day. Any sort of disruption/line closure where trains are turning short of their destination throws the entire thing into chaos as is evident.

Echoes of the Merseyrail signalling and PIS debacle in the late 1990s, I guess. The Modulex PIS never worked properly (other than by someone manually typing in what the next train was, so only using one line of the three-line displays) and was ripped out and replaced a few years later.
 

Bletchleyite

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Gateshead Station, along with four lane ends, regent centre are indeed very Soviet-seque. I really like the high ceilings and bare concrete design. Plus there’s some lovely artwork at Gateshead, particularly the space themed collage in the Newcastle bound tunnel.

I like that kind of thing generally, it's very common on German U-Bahnen (and indeed London Underground) for each station to have very much of its own character. Merseyrail never did that, which I always thought was a shame, it was all always very BR corporate (and now big-yellow-M corporate), and nor does Metrolink (with its yellow and grey "Merseyrail envy" branding).
 

cosmo

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Went down to South Shields today, by the time I got off the info board was showing the next train due in 13 minutes, despite one just having arrived! The front two in-train displays were lagging behind too - don't know if this has anything to do with the recent restructuring of the line into South Shields in preparation for the new interchange? There's no points directly before/after the station now, one line has been removed and there's certainly a longer single line section now than there was before and that might have thrown things off.
 

tellytype

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I’d say it’s more to do with the replacement of the management system with RTMS which will drive the describers etc. I recently did some work on the metro - technically they’re doing a massive programme of improvements - but whilst there I was told they were having quite a few teething problems with RTMS.
 

transmanche

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Here's an example of the type of thing that was showing up on destination indicators:

pwss.png

A tweet to Metro revealed that this stood for one of the stabling sidings at Pelaw.

Yellow line trains to St James via the Coast were showing W'tley Bay, but they've improved that recently. However, what the PA announces for some routes is different from what the platform displays show, which is different to what it on the front on the train!

What seems to have improved is when they have engineering work, they now display where the train actually terminates - not where the train (hypothetically) would have gone to had there been no work.
 

Tetchytyke

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What seems to have improved is when they have engineering work, they now display where the train actually terminates - not where the train (hypothetically) would have gone to had there been no work

That's not that much of an improvement, caused all sorts of consternation last weekend when everything south of the river stopped at Pelaw
 

transmanche

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That's not that much of an improvement, caused all sorts of consternation last weekend when everything south of the river stopped at Pelaw
I've always found it frustrating when a service is suspended for part of the day for engineering work that the true destination is not shown. You're never quite sure if you have a through train or if you have to change to a bus. E.g. in the situation you describe, alternate trains would display 'South Shields' and 'South Hylton' even though none of them are going further than Pelaw. If the train terminates at Pelaw, display Pelaw!
 

Bletchleyite

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I've always found it frustrating when a service is suspended for part of the day for engineering work that the true destination is not shown. You're never quite sure if you have a through train or if you have to change to a bus. E.g. in the situation you describe, alternate trains would display 'South Shields' and 'South Hylton' even though none of them are going further than Pelaw. If the train terminates at Pelaw, display Pelaw!

FWIW this practice has changed over time - it used to be practice on Merseyrail to show Ormskirk for the Ormskirk line, say, even if there was a bus for part of the journey.

This was probably because of the limited number of destinations available on the old manual blinds and PIS. That said, in latter years they tended towards showing "Special" for anything that wasn't the norm.
 

Tetchytyke

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E.g. in the situation you describe, alternate trains would display 'South Shields' and 'South Hylton' even though none of them are going further than Pelaw. If the train terminates at Pelaw, display Pelaw!

It was from the other side, people not sure how to get to Newcastle because everything was only going to Pelaw. Given the limited information the Metro PIS can show, I actually think the old style worked better.
 

cosmo

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I've always found it frustrating when a service is suspended for part of the day for engineering work that the true destination is not shown. You're never quite sure if you have a through train or if you have to change to a bus. E.g. in the situation you describe, alternate trains would display 'South Shields' and 'South Hylton' even though none of them are going further than Pelaw. If the train terminates at Pelaw, display Pelaw!

It was from the other side, people not sure how to get to Newcastle because everything was only going to Pelaw. Given the limited information the Metro PIS can show, I actually think the old style worked better.

It was certainly helpful for me when travelling during works to know the trains terminated at Haymarket, so I could get off at Monument/Central instead where it would be less busy upon exiting the train.
 
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