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St Pancras (Thameslink) at weekends
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bramling
Veteran Member
Could be to even out wear rates on escalators. If an escalator is not reversed from time to time then it may run into problems when a need arises (ie if an up escalator goes defective and the normal down needs to be changed to up). London Underground certainly do this where possible.
No idea if this is the actual reason at StP though.
You're talking about Shambleslink. That'd be far too easy.
Mind you if they did reverse the gates they'd no doubt forget to reverse them back on Monday morning causing chaos in the peak.
bramling
Veteran Member
At the end of the day St Pancras Int isn’t quite big enough for its expanded role. Three escalators simply isn’t enough to cater for the numbers entering the station combined with potentially two 12-car 700s discharging their load at the same time. Perhaps things will ease with time if and when more people experiment with using other core stations, in particular the Crossrail interchange at Farringdon.
sga962
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Escalators: They're reversed on the weekends to avoid them bedding in. Before they were refurbed we were unable to reverse 6 of the 7 if we needed to
The gatelines: reversing them with the escalators was the plan. IIRC the gate lines didnt like it and tended to crash so that got put on hold
source: I work there
The gatelines: reversing them with the escalators was the plan. IIRC the gate lines didnt like it and tended to crash so that got put on hold
source: I work there
Thanks for the info!
flitwickbeds
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I'd much rather the escalators further into the shopping centre - sorry, station - were put back to their original of one up, one down in each pair rather than one pair being down and one pair being up. You now have to walk about halfway down the station to go up.
sga962
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I agree, but EMR want it the way it is
It works better as it is during busy times or disruption, but it's unfortunate the second set of escalators are so far down.
flitwickbeds
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I'd assumed it was Network Rail/HS1 Ltd/Whoever owns and manages STP these days trying to design flows to get as many people as possible passing shops rather than finding shortcuts through the crowds.
Are there any other examples of TOCs demanding/requesting that stations they don't manage are designed in a certain way?
tsr
Established Member
That gateline does seem to be unusually “difficult” about things! Most gatelines have no real issue with switching passenger directions - or indeed going to “first come first served” at quieter stations / smaller layouts.
Presumably someone has decided to go with the worst-case scenario, because the last thing you want to do in an overcrowded station is to start trying to switch the directions of the escalators!
Plenty of requests and discussions take place, yes. Often you will have different TOCs providing their own station managers to represent them, but they will work together very closely and it’s not normally the case that one station manager (or another more senior rank) throws all their toys out of the pram and starts demanding stuff, because that would be most unhelpful.
EM2
Established Member
There were a lot of accidents with people getting to the top of the escalators, and stopping to read the departure boards.
The operation of the escalators by pairs has reduced this considerably.
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