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Stations that should have their platforms renumbered

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Andyh82

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Like Huddersfield... numbered 1 to 8, skipping 3 and 7 along the way (which are no longer there)
Not quite, the issue with Bristol TM is that the same platform face has two different numbers, rather than being an ‘a’ and ‘b’ like is more common.
 
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Greybeard33

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That makes sense, as it was intended to re-signal Stockport at about that time, but this was later abandoned. See comments above about re-numbering often coinciding with re-signalling.
As I understand it, the Stockport re- signalling, planned as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, would have reconfigured the tracks from paired by direction to paired by use. This would have swapped the direction of the tracks through Platforms 2 and 3, and most of the southbound London/Birmingham expresses would then have used Platform 1. Platform 0 (the easternmost) would have pre-sorted eastbound services to Hazel Grove/Buxton/Sheffield, to avoid some of them using Platform 3 then crossing the Fasts at Edgeley Junction.

Abandonment of the re-signalling has left Platform 0 as something of a white elephant, with Up Slow services split between 0 and 1. Only on a couple of occasions in the evening peak are the three Up platforms (0, 1 and 2) all used concurrently.
 

edwin_m

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As I understand it, the Stockport re- signalling, planned as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, would have reconfigured the tracks from paired by direction to paired by use. This would have swapped the direction of the tracks through Platforms 2 and 3, and most of the southbound London/Birmingham expresses would then have used Platform 1. Platform 0 (the easternmost) would have pre-sorted eastbound services to Hazel Grove/Buxton/Sheffield, to avoid some of them using Platform 3 then crossing the Fasts at Edgeley Junction.

Abandonment of the re-signalling has left Platform 0 as something of a white elephant, with Up Slow services split between 0 and 1. Only on a couple of occasions in the evening peak are the three Up platforms (0, 1 and 2) all used concurrently.
I agree it's pretty redundant at present, although it provides a bit of resilience if trains are closely following on the Up Slow. Even with the intended pairing by use it would to a large extent be duplicating platform 1, although it would be more useful (in that situation and currently) if the Platform 0 track had been extended to provide parallel moves towards Hazel Grove and Cheadle Hulme.
 

ashkeba

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Thats because 1 and 4 are 2 platforms! (Scissor crossovers in the middle). It would make no sense as A and B.
Why should passengers have to know about the trackwork? It looks and feels like one long platform to anyone standing on it, even more so since the island platforms were built, with platform 7 opposite platforms 1 and 4: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.1...k-no-pi0-ya352.17453-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Also, I've been reminded by the sign you can see in that streetview that 4 is still split into 4 and 4a to help northbound passengers get into the front four.

The random-looking numbering combines with the lack of link from the ticket hall to 7 and 8 (you have to use the stairs/lift on platform 4) to make Cambridge station feels like a thoughtless bodge, not at all fitting for a seat of high education. It needs redoing sensibly - maybe they can find some clever people in that city to help!
 

Steve Harris

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Why should passengers have to know about the trackwork? It looks and feels like one long platform to anyone standing on it, even more so since the island platforms were built, with platform 7 opposite platforms 1 and 4: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.1945165,0.1378286,3a,75y,165.12h,78.97t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNAxNlraOB7LjhKCteZgxG-zojk9rZlUTz1RLuk!2e10!3e11!6shttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipNAxNlraOB7LjhKCteZgxG-zojk9rZlUTz1RLuk=w203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya352.17453-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Also, I've been reminded by the sign you can see in that streetview that 4 is still split into 4 and 4a to help northbound passengers get into the front four.

The random-looking numbering combines with the lack of link from the ticket hall to 7 and 8 (you have to use the stairs/lift on platform 4) to make Cambridge station feels like a thoughtless bodge, not at all fitting for a seat of high education. It needs redoing sensibly - maybe they can find some clever people in that city to help!
They dont. But, as a passenger, if you stood between 1 and 4 long enough, you would soon realise nothing stopped there !

As for needing clever people. You don't need them, you just need plenty of ££££££ to do it properly (but at the same time, destroy the stations architecture, as this is what has had a constraint on were the footbridge was built). Hence why it feels like a bodge.

And btw, the google link is of the old Post Office unloading bays !!
 
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Tio Terry

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Why should passengers have to know about the trackwork? It looks and feels like one long platform to anyone standing on it, even more so since the island platforms were built, with platform 7 opposite platforms 1 and 4: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.1945165,0.1378286,3a,75y,165.12h,78.97t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNAxNlraOB7LjhKCteZgxG-zojk9rZlUTz1RLuk!2e10!3e11!6shttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipNAxNlraOB7LjhKCteZgxG-zojk9rZlUTz1RLuk=w203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya352.17453-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Also, I've been reminded by the sign you can see in that streetview that 4 is still split into 4 and 4a to help northbound passengers get into the front four.

The random-looking numbering combines with the lack of link from the ticket hall to 7 and 8 (you have to use the stairs/lift on platform 4) to make Cambridge station feels like a thoughtless bodge, not at all fitting for a seat of high education. It needs redoing sensibly - maybe they can find some clever people in that city to help!

I guess you are unaware of the reasons Cambridge has a double length platform with central scissors crossovers?

It goes back to the original construction of the railway when the City Fathers insisted that the station design was such that none of their most valuable students would ever be exposed to danger by crossing the railway tracks. Hence the entrance allowing access to one long platform for North and South bound through trains and a number of bays, all of which could be accessed without crossing a track (footbridges were not normally provided all those years ago). So it was the "seat of high education" that caused this issue in the first place!
 

hexagon789

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It's a bloody shame what they did to that station comparing it to what we have today to before:

Oban_Railway_Station.jpg

9101632188_905e479beb_k.jpg

Indeed, I saw a photo of it in a book pre-rationalisation and like so many grand stations that once existed it's really a shadow of its former self; very much downgraded.
 

ashkeba

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They dont. But, as a passenger, if you stood between 1 and 4 long enough, you would soon realise nothing stopped there !

As for needing clever people. You don't need them, you just need plenty of ££££££ to do it properly (but at the same time, destroy the stations architecture, as this is what has had a constraint on were the footbridge was built). Hence why it feels like a bodge.
The listing is for the station frontage, not the architecture in general. As long as appropriate materials were used in a sympathetic way, it should be allowed. The station's setting has already been harmed by the "future slum" built around it.

And btw, the google link is of the old Post Office unloading bays !!
Not for me. It's a user-contributed view from just on the platform, almost level with the entry arches.

Anyway, even if someone wants to insist on numbering Cambridge's long platform as two numbers, the bays should be renumbered 1 to 4 to avoid the current bonkers west-to-east 6/3, 5/2, 4a/4/1, 7, 8 (and in the future 9 and 10)!
 

Steve Harris

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The listing is for the station frontage, not the architecture in general. As long as appropriate materials were used in a sympathetic way, it should be allowed. The station's setting has already been harmed by the "future slum" built around it.


Not for me. It's a user-contributed view from just on the platform, almost level with the entry arches.

Anyway, even if someone wants to insist on numbering Cambridge's long platform as two numbers, the bays should be renumbered 1 to 4 to avoid the current bonkers west-to-east 6/3, 5/2, 4a/4/1, 7, 8 (and in the future 9 and 10)!
I doubt if they will be a 9 and 10. Not unless they rip up the new stabling sidings which are in place but not fully connected yet.

You do have 2 lines between the new stabling sidings and platform 8. But there is no way there is enough room to get a island platform in there. I was actually above those lines today, so please don't try to argue as I've seen how much space there (isn't) first hand !

And I cant see you shoe horning any footbridge in within the confines behind the frontage (and i shall not say anymore than that as it has already been discussed in a thread on this very forum).

I do agree about the CB1 development (to give it it's offical title) though. The whole development around the station IMO has been misguided and was all about people making money.
 

ashkeba

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I doubt if they will be a 9 and 10. Not unless they rip up the new stabling sidings which are in place but not fully connected yet.
I seem to remember track being ripped up to build 7 and 8 so nothing is impossible.

And I cant see you shoe horning any footbridge in within the confines behind the frontage (and i shall not say anymore than that as it has already been discussed in a thread on this very forum).
I found https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/cambridge-island-platform-by-end-of-2011.30225/ but it doesn't seem to cover why the bridge is up on platform 5/4 instead of off the ticket hall.
 

Steve Harris

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I seem to remember track being ripped up to build 7.
Apart from the line through platform 7 is the old Reception line number 1.

Reception lines 1 -4 had been in situ for at least 30 or more years! The new stabling sidings are literally being installed now. So if you think NR will be digging up there investment in a couple of years you are deffently a clever man. Perhaps you should put yourself forward for the job ??
 

ashkeba

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So if you think NR will be digging up there investment in a couple of years you are deffently a clever man. Perhaps you should put yourself forward for the job ??
No-one else is talking of "in a couple of years". I just said to renumber so it makes sense in the long term. Where do you think 9 and 10 will be built eventually then?
 

Steve Harris

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No-one else is talking of "in a couple of years". I just said to renumber so it makes sense in the long term. Where do you think 9 and 10 will be built eventually then?
On the coalfield sidings !!!!
 
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181

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I guess you are unaware of the reasons Cambridge has a double length platform with central scissors crossovers?

It goes back to the original construction of the railway when the City Fathers insisted that the station design was such that none of their most valuable students would ever be exposed to danger by crossing the railway tracks. Hence the entrance allowing access to one long platform for North and South bound through trains and a number of bays, all of which could be accessed without crossing a track (footbridges were not normally provided all those years ago). So it was the "seat of high education" that caused this issue in the first place!

I'm not convinced by that. It's usually thought (and I'm not aware of reasons to doubt it) that the location of the station some way from the city centre was due to the influence of the University, but my understanding is that single-sided stations to avoid passengers crossing tracks were not uncommon in the early days of railways, and Cambridge just happened to stay that way for much longer than most.

It's never seemed particularly confusing to me, but perhaps that's because I know the pattern:

Circa 1980's generally anything going to London was from platform 1,2 or 3. And trains going north used 4,5 or 6. Which made perfect sense at the time.

(a bit like Edinburgh Waverley -- quite logical when you know the pattern, but potentially confusing when you don't).

I'm not specifically suggesting it needs changing, or indeed whether that is likely or feasible, but I do find the layout at Edinburgh Waverley very confusing

I'm not sure that there is a better alternative. Perhaps in the days when there were very few east end bays it could have been numbered from south-east round to north-east or vice versa, but the outside platforms would still have been an anomaly, and now that there's more of a continuous 'circle' of platforms again, a clockwise or anticlockwise system will inevitably put platform 1 near a much higher-numbered platform. And if they were numbered from north to south or vice versa, you'd have adjacent numbers widely separated from each other at opposite ends of the station.
 

Fast Track

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Newbury’s platform numbering always struck me as odd - the up platform to Paddington in the main building being 2 whilst the down west more remote platform is 1.
 

181

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The usual problem is that the platform numbers are hard-wired into the local signalling system, eg the theatre box indicators on signal posts, and all the obvious controls in the signal centre.

So when an extra platform is added it is usually much cheaper to just add the new “stuff” using suffix letters, rather than renumber on average half a station.

This is also why there are various platform zeros around the country...

There is a considerable cost involved in changing all the design and maintenance documents associated with the Signalling, Civils and M&E Documentation if you change things like platform numbers. If you don't update these documents at the time of change then you run an increased risk of accidents because what someone is reading from a plan does not relate to what is now changed on the ground.

It would occupy valuable resources needed for resignalling schemes and cause delays to projects for no noticeable gain. That's why it's usually delayed until there is a major resignalling driven change.

That's what I thought was the case. If I remember rightly, though, Woking had two renumberings in a fairly short space of time in the late 1980s/early 90s. The main through platforms always used to be numbered 2-5, 1 having been a long-vanished bay on the up side at the London end. Eventually they renumbered the platforms 1-4, but it wasn't very long before the new bay was built at the London end of the island platform and numbered 3, so the down platforms reverted to being 4 and 5.
 

Strathclyder

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Although not nearly as convoluted as some of the other examples listed above, Anniesland's platform numbering sequence has been a bit muddled since Platform 3 (for terminating Maryhill Line trains) was opened in 2005.

1069-0000002.jpg


Ideally, the platform numbers should be swapped around (from the current 1/Eastbound + 2/Westbound to 1/Westbound + 2/Eastbound). Although I will concede it's not really worth the hassle for such a minor change. If nothing else, it's just a personal (and admittedly stupid) niggle lol
 
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YorkshireBear

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I'm not specifically suggesting it needs changing, or indeed whether that is likely or feasible, but I do find the layout at Edinburgh Waverley very confusing

I thought this having tried navigating it changing trains for first time recently rather than just visiting Edinburgh. But it seems to work on start at 1 and number platforms as you circle the central concourse clockwise.
 

MK Tom

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Never liked Northampton's 3-2-1-4-5 layout. Also Stafford's never made sense with the bay being 2 and the rest of the station going 1-3-4-5-6.

Also personal bugbear but 2A at Milton Keynes Central should be 1A.
 

plugwash

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I'm sure when the new platform was being built there was a plan to number it platform 1 and then renumber the others from 2 to 6, only they didn't bother.
I remember they even got as far as putting up platform 1 signs on what is now platform zero at stockport.

As I understand it, the Stockport re- signalling, planned as part of the West Coast Route Modernisation, would have reconfigured the tracks from paired by direction to paired by use.
Glad they didn't do that. It's really nice having all the trains to Manchester go from the same platform pair.

Abandonment of the re-signalling has left Platform 0 as something of a white elephant, with Up Slow services split between 0 and 1. Only on a couple of occasions in the evening peak are the three Up platforms (0, 1 and 2) all used concurrently.
Though presumably it does allow for easier re-sorting of services (e.g. holding a hazel grove/buxton train so a delayed Sheffield train can go out first)
 

Greybeard33

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Though presumably it does allow for easier re-sorting of services (e.g. holding a hazel grove/buxton train so a delayed Sheffield train can go out first)
I have seen that happen from time to time, with the Hazel Grove/Buxton train held in Stockport Platform 0. But then the delayed Sheffield train is nearly always routed into Platform 2 not 1, because it gets an Up Fast route from Slade Lane to make up time. When a train from the Up Fast is routed into Platform 1, it is brought almost to a stand at the signal on the viaduct, causing further delay. So the stopper could equally well have been held in Platform 1 to be overtaken. And, if it is the EMT service (normally booked into P0) that is late, it has to wait for the boarding passengers to rush down the stairs, through the subway and up to P2. (The Cleethorpes is now booked into P1, so passengers only have to cross the island if it gets diverted into P2. But this has undermined the principle that all services to Hazel Grove and beyond use P0).

Clearly when there is severe disruption it helps to have three Up platforms rather than two. But most of the time P1 and P2 could handle all of the services, as P3 and P4 have to in the Down direction.
 

SteveyBee131

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I don't think anyone mentioned Bridlington yet. These days it has 3 platforms, but they are numbered 4, 5 and 6! I wonder where in the mists of time 1, 2 and 3 went!

(On a side note but slightly off topic, I seem to remember seeing some semaphores last time I was there :D)
 

DanTrain

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Surely Meridian Water must be worth noting here - a newly built station with platforms 2, 3 and 4 :D.(yes, I know there's a perfectly valid reson for this re Crossrail!)
 
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I don't think anyone mentioned Bridlington yet. These days it has 3 platforms, but they are numbered 4, 5 and 6! I wonder where in the mists of time 1, 2 and 3 went!

(On a side note but slightly off topic, I seem to remember seeing some semaphores last time I was there :D)
8 platforms at one time. The original station front is a fragment on platform 4. A trainshed covered platforms 1 and 2 as at Beverley with a short bay at the Hull end. Such were the flows of people in the summer that two extra platforms and a bay were built in front of the station in 1912. This allowed better passenger flow and created pairs of up and down platforms to deal with the immense traffic coming to the coast via Market Weighton. An excursion station (platforms 7 and 8) was built for long trains and connected to the main station via a footbridge. A new concourse by George Bell united the complex.
Today it's a shadow of its former self but the concourse is well presented and spacious.
Mr Pearson the last manager said he didn't want to renumber the platforms when 1 and 2 were abolished in 1983.
 

Denis103

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There is a considerable cost involved in changing all the design and maintenance documents associated with the Signalling, Civils and M&E Documentation if you change things like platform numbers. If you don't update these documents at the time of change then you run an increased risk of accidents because what someone is reading from a plan does not relate to what is now changed on the ground.

It would occupy valuable resources needed for resignalling schemes and cause delays to projects for no noticeable gain. That's why it's usually delayed until there is a major resignalling driven change.
I fully agree with your comments here.
It is not only just the documents and details shown within the railway organisations but you also have to change all documentation that the emergency services, electricity, gas, water utilities, council plans etc, etc, use that show the details of the stations.
When the new platform was installed at Kings Cross, originally being numbered as Platform Y but is now ‘0’ discussions were held regarding the complete renumbering of the station to make the new platform 1 and change every other one.
Due to the cost being into 7 figures before the decimal point, this was discounted and the new platform renumbered as ‘0’.
 

ashkeba

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Due to the cost being into 7 figures before the decimal point, this was discounted and the new platform renumbered as ‘0’.
Annoying and unimaginative. Even platform Y or A is better than 0. Something imaginative like platform 42 or platform 89 (a nice nod to the preservation movement whose mainline-ready locomotives are now numbered in Class 89, as well as the electrification prototype) would have been even better.
 
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