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Poor Delay Management (Or how to lose friends and alienate people)

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Bletchleyite

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Wasn’t that when Virgin ran local stoppers too?

Virgin have never operated local stoppers on the south WCML. They did for a while hire a LHCS set to Silverlink who used it on the "Master Cobbler" (the fast Euston-MKC-Northampton departing around 1815 - currently 1813 I think - would be nice if LNR would put the name back on it! :) ).

It was certainly after Virgin withdrew a lot of MKC/WFJ stops and put "u" and "s" on others, this occurred in about 2003-2004 ish.
 

pdeaves

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At least three TOCs (whose areas overlap) DO have a plan for delays. "After departure of such-and-such train, work to contingency plan B". The contingency plans define what services are thinned out, which ones to stop short, when (and where) crew would need to swap over/take breaks, etc. I would struggle to believe that other areas do not use something similar.
 

oversteer

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Virgin have never operated local stoppers on the south WCML. They did for a while hire a LHCS set to Silverlink who used it on the "Master Cobbler" (the fast Euston-MKC-Northampton departing around 1815 - currently 1813 I think - would be nice if LNR would put the name back on it! :) ).
No I mean some day there was disruption, they ran 390 services that did all stops to MKC, or something? Might have been that snow day in 2008, will do a search
 

Bletchleyite

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No I mean some day there was disruption, they ran 390 services that did all stops to MKC, or something? Might have been that snow day in 2008, will do a search

Ah, I thought you meant as a matter of course.

No, that wasn't the snow day, it was another day (or couple of days) on which something really serious happened and blocked the line around Cheddington, I think it may have been when those containers went flying. A Pendolino was indeed used to operate a Tring stopping service as there were not enough 350s there to do it.
 

DarloRich

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Ah, I thought you meant as a matter of course.

No, that wasn't the snow day, it was another day (or couple of days) on which something really serious happened and blocked the line around Cheddington, I think it may have been when those containers went flying. A Pendolino was indeed used to operate a Tring stopping service as there were not enough 350s there to do it.

they also did it when that class 90 derailed at Bletchley blocking the lines
 

nuts & bolts

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It's usual these days to set the PIS to only show trains that are running in severe disruption. This was done at Euston this evening, I saw a picture of the completely blank departure board from a friend.
.

'Darwin' is switched off and train service information input manually.
 

TheEdge

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Certainly have never seen this before!

It's fairly common during major disruption. While I've not seen totally blank screens like that GA PIS goes into disruption mode where only trains manually confirmed to run appear. Nothing is done automatically or using basic filters.
 

oversteer

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Thanks, Realtimetrains updated itself after I posted, looks like I did well to get that one!
 

Bald Rick

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Re information, it’s worth looking at this from the other end of the telescope.

An individual traveller (and I am one!) will naturally want to know what is happening to MY train on MY route NOW.

The people in control responsible for disseminating information will have incomplete info, an evolving situation, and most importantly, potentially dozens of trains, each with hundreds of individual passengers, to communicate to. It is impossible to get the right individual message through the chain to every individual passenger. There will always be passengers who feel they have no info, or poor info, which cause them individual strife. And many will complain (rightly), often on these pages.

Meanwhile those who do get good info get to their destination relatively smoothly, but, naturally, won’t shout about it. A notable proportion will complete their journey without even realising there was a problem.

I’m in the fortunate position to have been on both ends of the telescope. Even so, I get really frustrated when info isn’t passed on, but almost every time it is because the driver / conductor / station announcer has not been given the info. Hell, I’ve even been on trains where I have realised what is happening well before the driver, and asked him/her if I can do the annoucements, and they have been more than happy to oblige.
 
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