London Waterloo circular services

[MontyP]

I’ve noticed a few issues with the way that information about the circular Waterloo-Richmond-Kingston-Waterloo services on SWR is presented:

- on the big departure boards at Wimbledon, the clockwise service (i.e. first stop Raynes Park) is shown as “Richmond via Clapham Junction”. I understand advertising the destination as Richmond, but why the “via Clapham Junction” when the service has already stopped there? It stops again there later, but after Richmond (so “via” is incorrect). And no-one in their right mind would travel to Clapham Junction that way.

- from some stations (e.g. Raynes Park), the clockwise service appears in online planners as a “London Waterloo” service even though the journey time is considerably longer than the direct route via Wimbledon. Most regular traveller will realise this but irregular travellers might not, particularly when services are not so frequent e.g. Sunday mornings. The platform indicators advertise the services as destination Richmond.

Does the way that these services are represented need to be improved?

 

[AverageTD]

The stations between Wandsworth Town and Twickenham are generally fine. The trains are advertised as going to the last or second last stop before the service “joins with itself” again. For example after Barnes a Hounslow Loop service is advertised as going to Chiswick until it reaches Whitton where the journey time is almost the same no matter which way you go around.

Between Wandsworth Town and Twickenham a Kingston Loop service is advertised as a Wimbledon train until you get to Strawberry Hill. A station where the journey time is almost the same to Waterloo no matter which way you travel.

I don’t use Raynes Park at all but to me Loop services should be advertised as going to Putney until Teddington. The other way of doing this is what SWR have done at Kingston recently and brought in departure boards that lists all stops the train will go to without having to wait to scroll through them all.

Either way from what you say the boards at Raynes Park are straight up wrong and could cause confusion so SWR should really deal with it properly.

 

[BluePenguin]

The clockwise services going New Malden Norbiton, Kingston direction seem to advertise themselves as "Richmond via Strawberry Hill" from what I remember

 

[LeeLivery]

Could it have just been an error at Wimbledon? I've always known it to be "Richmond via Kingston" there.

I always thought it was displayed as:

Strawberry Hill (from Waterloo - Earls)
Richmond (from Wim - Norbiton)
London Waterloo via Richmond (Kingston - Twickenham)
London Waterloo (St Marg - Waterloo)