Looking again, the train skipped Teddington to New Malden inclusive, and the following Roundabout was indeed cancelled. I was misled by the OP's reference to the late start from Shepperton.
The following train from Teddington was cancelled it was the Kingston rounder one not the next Shepperton one 10.00 Waterloo to waterloo
Thanks for the correction.
If you’re just being held at a red, not really. You’d then be stopping out of course, and what if someone boards the train wanting a different destination etc. It’s almost always going to be easiest to wait outside.
If there’s likely to be an extended delay (eg because the train in front has struck a person) it is generally better to stop in a platform, release the doors, and allow people the option of getting off the train.
Out of interest if a train waits outside of a station and then there is an issue requiring the power to be switched off, would they have time to get into the station before the power wws switched off?
I was once on a train where the horn had iced up. The driver went out to look but being human forgot to open the doors for the passengers. Another train pulled in and left. One people could have caught. I hasten to add we were due to stop at the station. I can't remember if the doors ever opened before the other train even arrived They did after the other train had left mind you.
I only mention this to highlight people are humans and no one is perfect. I think it may have been at Haslemere this happened and it would have been in the naughties and heading towards Guildford.
That's definitely not ideal - telling passengers before departure is preferable.
Although not quite skip stopping, it use to be fairly regular practice, or seemed like it to me, to tell passengers on a Reading to Gatick Airport service, once at Reigate or between Reigate and Redhill that the train would be terminating at Redhill due to delays.
I could mostly guess correctly what waa going to happen before it was announced and 9 times out of 10 I was correct. I would be expecting it to happen from Guildford, if the delay was big enough at this point.
Nor so sure these days abkut teeminating early, as I don't think that happens as much.
Sometimes it is more difficult to reverse because of the confusion it then causes (although on the contrary I regular see running fast decisions reversed). So it's not ideal and often decisions aren't made for such small lateness even on the most intensive metro railways but it can occasionally happen.
Playing devils advocate, given reversing decisions can lead to confusion, what is the advantage of reversing a decision?
Yes ignoring such an instruction having confirmed it via either a written not to call / special stop order or via a verbal communication with a controller/signaller would certainly raise some eyebrows without a very good justification (likely safety grounds).
Back in around 2002, I was going from Guildford to Earls Court. The train I was on unexpectedly stopped at Clapham Junction as it should not have done. It was a slam door train.
Some people got out and I hesitated as no aannouncement from the guard but eventually I did get out. I thus got to my destination much faster that day as usually I had no choice but to go via Waterloo. I think a stopping train from Guildford to Clapham Junction would have been even slower than going via Waterloo.
The solution is to try and rewrite the timetable for that branch so instead of having tight turnarounds the turnarounds are more like 15 minutes, introducing an extra unit into that route.
I wonder if there are any aspirations to do this fuether down the line, pun not intended?
Until you get a passenger who wanted to travel to Wellington/Telford finding themselves on a trip to Wolverhampton as they were unable to get off the train in time.
A train once had to skip Surbtion because another train was blocking platform 3 due to a passenger being taken ill. Next stop was Woking. The passengers had to get a semi-fast or stopping train back to Surbiton.
SWR have a nasty habit of ripping out the Andover call on the Exeter - London trains when they are running late (which due to the single track nature of the West of England line delays can easily build up), which is fine until they also cancel the stopper and pull the same trick to the following London train.
How long do you have to wait before they would offer you some form of alternative transport?
Are you in a position to know whether there are crews and resources to do that? It has been discussed on the 701 thread that it might take a couple of years or more for the full 701 fleet to be introduced.
I think you underestimate how thinly spread resources (both in terms of crew and rolling stock) are on the railway.
As I said to
@Kite159, I wonder if it's an aspiration for the future?
"The CIS" and "control" will be one and the same, it's just that the decision might be made en route. The next stop will of course normally be a booked one otherwise you are overcarrying people beyond their destination without the chance to alight - I have seen this done though (or a signaller making a routing decision that makes it impossible) but it's very much not good practice.
Occasionally trains have to skip stations due to the only platform they can stop at being occupied and that leads to overcarrying that simply can't be avoided.
Fine if the branch ran in isolation, but not that simple in reality as there just aren't loads of spare alternative paths between New Malden and Waterloo. It needs to be part of a wider recast, the ideal solution being to interwork the Shepperton trains with something else at Waterloo so make it work much better.
Some small things have been done to try to improve things. Shepperton trains no longer call at Earlsfield Off Peak, drivers are no longer diagrammed to work 2 Shepperton trains in a row to allow quicker turnarounds at Waterloo when there is late running. They were also all booked 707 when they were still around as they were believed to be the quickest.
What about Earlsfield during the peak? Were the 707s the quickest and did they do a better job at reducing the skip stopping than at the momemt?
They don't "have to" in some places.
Why is it they don't have to have written papers in some but do in others? Is it to do with technology available and/or how busy the route is?
Finally, I remember when South West Trains announced they would try to ensure the same groups of people were not disrupted everytime there was disruption.
After this was announced, the same skipping patterns of stations continued during disruption so I never understood what they meant by this press release.
I took it to mean they would skip different groups of stations so a stopping service late to Surbiton wouldn't always have Wimbledon to Vauxhall stations skipped but they would do something else. Perhaps they did and it just wasn't obvious.
