London Bridge - new timetable during reconstruction works commencing 5th January 2015

[Chrisgr31]

So now that Southern and GTR have merged the Twitter teams, how do regular users of the service find it? Is it as good?

It's the same Twitter address and can only de described as total and utter crap. It is a significantly poorer service, and gives no information at all. They tend to say there is disruption and give a link for you to check. You need to select that link then the link within the resultant page, then enter your stations and then get the info that may or may not answer your original question.

The only real solution is to follow @southernmalachi who is a volunteer who tweets most information about peak hour delays and cancellations. He can't do short forms as that information is only released at the station when it is too late to be of any use to anyone!

 

[neilm]

So now that Southern and GTR have merged the Twitter teams, how do regular users of the service find it? Is it as good?

Useless, completely useless. They hardly tweet any information and if they do it is just a link to where you have to enter your own train details to find out anything.

Down to southern Malachi to save the day.

 

[infobleep]

I always saw Twitter as a tool to Tweet links to Web sites that contain information and perhaps emerging disruption and then for correspondence between social media staff and passengers. Basically how South West Trains run their one. Its works OK on the whole.

 

[87015]

I always saw Twitter as a tool to Tweet links to Web sites that contain information and perhaps emerging disruption and then for correspondence between social media staff and passengers. Basically how South West Trains run their one. Its works OK on the whole.

Yes, the glaring omission being Southern are too tight to pay for journeycheck or provide ANY live information on their website. Every(?) other TOC manages to do so, but its too difficult for Southern.

 

[neilm]

I always saw Twitter as a tool to Tweet links to Web sites that contain information and perhaps emerging disruption and then for correspondence between social media staff and passengers. Basically how South West Trains run their one. Its works OK on the whole.

You forgot they do not offer journey check, its easy to forget as every other train company offers it

 

[Chrisgr31]

I always saw Twitter as a tool to Tweet links to Web sites that contain information and perhaps emerging disruption and then for correspondence between social media staff and passengers. Basically how South West Trains run their one. Its works OK on the whole.

Sure this has been discussed before and some people where in your camp, and others, including most of Southerns followers who say that tweeting links is a total waste of time as when you are on the move its a lot easier to scroll through tweets that have arrived in your feed than click links, enter details of your journey, click more links etc. I can read Twitter upon the phone whilst walking I can't enter information into the journey heck site whilst walking.

 

[Minstral25]

Sure this has been discussed before and some people where in your camp, and others, including most of Southerns followers who say that tweeting links is a total waste of time as when you are on the move its a lot easier to scroll through tweets that have arrived in your feed than click links, enter details of your journey, click more links etc. I can read Twitter upon the phone whilst walking I can't enter information into the journey heck site whilst walking.

Couldn't agree more and twitter works by updating when you have signal strength. Unlike websites that need signal strength when you want the information - which when you are on the move is unlikely

 

[Bald Rick]

I am wondering if this was related to the removal of a temporary pedestrian bridge over the tracks between the depot and Norwood Junction station? Or is the removal of that bridge just a coincidence?

Coincidence. Tamper cut a cable early this morning.

 

[FOH]

Does anyone know what happens to 2F99, 0721 LBG-VIC? Cancelled this morning and one of our locals reckons it gets cancelled more days than not.

 

[Deepgreen]

Now there is a signal problem near Brockley - 20 minute delays until 1600 or later.

 

[infobleep]

You forgot they do not offer journey check, its easy to forget as every other train company offers it

I didn't actually forget that.

The solution for me isn't to reintroduce individual train tweets but to provide an external Web Site with the information. Individual train tweets clutter up the feed when asking questions. Clearly the latter is better than nothing I guess.

 

[tsr]

Does anyone know what happens to 2F99, 0721 LBG-VIC? Cancelled this morning and one of our locals reckons it gets cancelled more days than not.

It started from Balham (!) due to overrunning works displacing the train.

Here is the history of the train since the beginning of the year: http://raildar.co.uk/timetable/train?trainid=W74634 . It's run on the vast majority of days, but unfortunately I cannot of course tell from that overview the days on which it may have been cancelled at any given stop.

 

[infobleep]

Couldn't agree more and twitter works by updating when you have signal strength. Unlike websites that need signal strength when you want the information - which when you are on the move is unlikely

Both need signal strength as both use mobile data. At Clapham Junction when the signal is bad I can get neither Twitter or South West Trains Journey Check Web Site to load.

May be other people's experiences are different.

 

[tsr]

Now there is a signal problem near Brockley - 20 minute delays until 1600 or later.

The issue is a track circuit failure on the Down Slow line. There was one in the same area flagged up during the engineering work yesterday, and again by Southern Control (I would guess after consultation with NR!) at 0500 this morning. I don't know if these two prior events are explicitly related, but it seems likely.

Some Southbound Southern Metro trains are running non-stop from New Cross Gate to Sydenham. CIS operators should be aware of the first few of these by now.

 

[neilm]

I didn't actually forget that.

The solution for me isn't to reintroduce individual train tweets but to provide an external Web Site with the information. Individual train tweets clutter up the feed when asking questions. Clearly the latter is better than nothing I guess.

Agree which is why they should have journey check, simple website and reliable email alerts. Incredible they ever got rid of it.

 

[Bishopstone]

18.26 Horsham/Reigate let out in front of the 18.23 Eastbourne tonight, despite our ECS arriving first. Unamused.

 

[neilm]

18.26 Horsham/Reigate let out in front of the 18.23 Eastbourne tonight, despite our ECS arriving first. Unamused.

Indeed a mess tonight, no tweets about it and I have realised we cannot find out about ticket acceptance anymore unless NRE create an incident since southern do not tweet anymore.
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Bet the 18:17 was a barrel of laughs tonight, it was sent via tulse hill with no warning.

 

[bicbasher]

It looked like LOROL had sent a dispatcher to Brockley when I was on a LOROL service to Crystal Palace this evening. Was also a slight wait at a red signal getting into the station southbound on the slow. Didn't affect the fast though.

 

[infobleep]

Indeed a mess tonight, no tweets about it and I have realised we cannot find out about ticket acceptance anymore unless NRE create an incident since southern do not tweet anymore.
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Bet the 18:17 was a barrel of laughs tonight, it was sent via tulse hill with no warning.

I thought Southern created the incidents on NRE. If that is the case do they have less staff doing that now as well?

 

[neilm]

Do they? That would explain a lot so NRE about tonight even though 20 - 30 min delays

 

[carriageline]

It looked like LOROL had sent a dispatcher to Brockley when I was on a LOROL service to Crystal Palace this evening. Was also a slight wait at a red signal getting into the station southbound on the slow. Didn't affect the fast though.

Was a MOM from network rail. Due to the track circuit failure at brockley.

 

[infobleep]

Do they? That would explain a lot so NRE about tonight even though 20 - 30 min delays

I was told by one of the Twitter team, who may or may not work for Southern any more, that Southern only put up information if most trains are delayed by 15 minutes or more. Was that the case tonight?

I did see a reference to Brockley earlier in the day and I don't know if that was the issue affecting London Bridge.

 

[neilm]

Southern tweeted 20 mins delay at 18:42 but just that no nre link just that. But few trains were later than that and at 18:00 it was already like that

 

[Chrisgr31]

I didn't actually forget that.

The solution for me isn't to reintroduce individual train tweets but to provide an external Web Site with the information. Individual train tweets clutter up the feed when asking questions. Clearly the latter is better than nothing I guess.

I am not sure what the problem is with the timeline getting full. You ask a question it gets answered and you know its answered as it has your name on it so it appears in that place of your feed.

I guess the solution is for those that dont like this change to tweet asking SOuthern about as many different trains as possible so the info is there.

 

[tsr]

Once again, it seems the delays at London Bridge this evening were caused by a combination of factors - train crew issues, the track circuit failure at Brockley, a car pursued by police damaging the level crossing barriers at Ford, the ever-present congestion, and so on and so forth. None of these individually would probably have warranted a contribution to NRE for delays in the London Bridge area, but it seems that unfortunately on this occasion the bigger picture was lost in terms of dealing with information about the delays. Interestingly, things seemed to spike in severity and then drop off very quickly indeed when delayed trains were clear of lines North of East/West Croydon. There are still a few isolated delays and cancellations, but despite the underwhelming public information, service recovery seems to have gone quite well for most of the network.

 

[infobleep]

I am not sure what the problem is with the timeline getting full. You ask a question it gets answered and you know its answered as it has your name on it so it appears in that place of your feed.

I guess the solution is for those that dont like this change to tweet asking SOuthern about as many different trains as possible so the info is there.

If it isn't a problem, why would Southern resort to broadcast mode and not answer people's questions? Is that just because they didn't have time to answer them while tweeting out?

South West Trains did but perhaps it was another person or people who maintained Journey Check.

I do notice that times, on multi TOC twitter feeds that people ask questions in repose to other Tweets and they don't get a response. So somehow the tweet in such cases is not being noticed by rail staff.
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Once again, it seems the delays at London Bridge this evening were caused by a combination of factors - train crew issues, the track circuit failure at Brockley, a car pursued by police damaging the level crossing barriers at Ford, the ever-present congestion, and so on and so forth. None of these individually would probably have warranted a contribution to NRE for delays in the London Bridge area, but it seems that unfortunately on this occasion the bigger picture was lost in terms of dealing with information about the delays. Interestingly, things seemed to spike in severity and then drop off very quickly indeed when delayed trains were clear of lines North of East/West Croydon. There are still a few isolated delays and cancellations, but despite the underwhelming public information, service recovery seems to have gone quite well for most of the network.

That's one of the things that seems to be very hard to get a handle on at times.

I call delays that happen gradually on a journey delay creep. It's where delays build up slowly along a journey.

I guess if delays build up slowly it's easy not to realise how significant the delays are.

I do think there should be a warning system that alerts staff when a train is delayed by over a certain amount and no information about the reason for that train being delayed has been published online. Perhaps that's already being done.

 

[tsr]

That's one of the things that seems to be very hard to get a handle on at times.

I call delays that happen gradually on a journey delay creep. It's where delays build up slowly along a journey.

I guess if delays build up slowly it's easy not to realise how significant the delays are.

I do think there should be a warning system that alerts staff when a train is delayed by over a certain amount and no information about the reason for that train being delayed has been published online. Perhaps that's already being done.

Southern Control and certain related people involved in CIS will have the ability to see a very detailed picture of how delays are affecting certain trains and will get alerts from their software when some unusual/unknown delay happens to occur. However, it can on occasion be a case of translating this per-train into meaningful information, something which is hard to do when congestion is so unpredictable and each delay event flagged up may only be of the 1/2 minute magnitude.

Sometimes it would appear more critical to work out how to get stock in the right places, or ensure passengers do not get horrifically delayed by missed connections or conflicting moves causing agonising delays at major junctions, than actually working out the minutiae of why a train has not accelerated into a particular signal section as quickly as possible.

 

[Orange Box]

Orangebox hasn't replied after I asked the same question...

As the West Croydon via New Cross Gate service are only cancelled in the evening peak presumably it would mean more South Bermondsey turnbacks but how do you get everyone to South Bermondsey (or beyond) with only 4trains in 2 hours??? I wonder what TfL would have to say about the extra pressure on the overground?

Its solid gen. You'll have to appreciate I can't go public as Southern won't as its too political.
The fact 'tsr' and the other SN\Govia\NR project lot have not rebuked it says it all. My only advice would be to get your MPs involved asap.

 

[87015]

Southern Control and certain related people involved in CIS will have the ability to see a very detailed picture of how delays are affecting certain trains and will get alerts from their software when some unusual/unknown delay happens to occur. However, it can on occasion be a case of translating this per-train into meaningful information, something which is hard to do when congestion is so unpredictable and each delay event flagged up may only be of the 1/2 minute magnitude.

Sometimes it would appear more critical to work out how to get stock in the right places, or ensure passengers do not get horrifically delayed by missed connections or conflicting moves causing agonising delays at major junctions, than actually working out the minutiae of why a train has not accelerated into a particular signal section as quickly as possible.

So Southern Metro ''control'' is not fit for purpose is it. No wonder staff on the ground appear tonhave lost the will to care, goodnight Vienna it would seem.

Bring back Connex....that's not said lightly but at least they tried to be interested in providing a service.

 

[tsr]

Its solid gen. You'll have to appreciate I can't go public as Southern won't as its too political.
The fact 'tsr' and the other SN\Govia\NR project lot have not rebuked it says it all. My only advice would be to get your MPs involved asap.

Whilst I do not explicitly comment on any employment I may have which involves me in Southern, NR or the Thameslink Programme project, what I would say is that whether I "rebuke" a post (I don't like that word in this situation, but I know what you mean ) does not endorse/confirm/deny it. However, in this case, what I would say is that there is of course an aspiration to "put back" services, and there are reasons beyond pure politics.

Getting MPs involved, though, could be a good idea for some, but pressure is coming from all angles, so you'll always be annoying someone at the moment...!
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So Southern Metro ''control'' is not fit for purpose is it. No wonder staff on the ground appear tonhave lost the will to care, goodnight Vienna it would seem.

Bring back Connex....that's not said likely, but at least they tried to be interested in providing a service.

"Control" is not a single living, breathing organism shuddering in the depths of the ROC. Much varies per the quality of info they get, the overall state of the network vs providing CIS info for increments of one or two minutes, the provision or lack of systems which can automatically perform that latter task accurately - also who's actually there, and how many folks there are. It varies...