Grrrr!

[venta]

Reading's quite a big station. It has at least 12 platforms, and many trains. At 5pm on a Friday, it is quite a busy place.

It would be nice if the indicator boards worked. I know things go wrong occasionally, but come on, they've been out for over a week now.

Since the indicator boards are broken, it'd be good if there were a person on the help desk.

If you're too short staffed to put someone on the help desk, it would be all right if the information office were open.

When the information office is closed, and the queue for tickets is looking like a 15 minute wait, those of us who want to know from which platform the imminently-departing train to Twickenham will leave have to ask the person who's manning the ticket barrier.

If he says, in tones of great surprise, "do trains to Twickenham go from here?", this is not consoling.

When the only option appears to be to begin a tour of the platforms, looking in each case at the next train expected on that platform (and the list of stops, since the ultimate destination of the train I required appeared to be a closely guarded secret), this is quite annoying.

It rapidly becomes more annoying when, having triumphantly located the correct platform (4A, if anyone cares, trains to London Waterloo call at Twickenham), one arrives there just in time to see the train pull out of the station.

Ironically, this was the first recorded case all week of a train I wished to catch departing Reading on time.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Does Reading not have those boards listing destinations one by one with the details of the trains which go to each destination?

It does, but they don't provide platform information. And, by the time I'd thought of consulting them to find out the eventual destination of the train, they were on the wrong side of the ticket barriers (or I was).

However, once I'd missed the train I did use them to plot my new route... I don't usually lose my temper, or vent it on unsuspecting inanimate objects, but I did discover that the hinged frames of the timetables make a very satisfying "clang" if you swing them rather more violently than is absolutely necessary.

[venta.livejournal.com]

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Ahem. Nasty fit of the italics, there.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Far fewer of such boards provide good platform info than they used to, which is rather a shame.

I know someone who took a year out before university on the "A Year In Industry" scheme and worked for a branch of BR (remember, this was about ten years ago) producing not those signs but the big local information signs that you normally find next to them. Sounds like a good job to me!

It should be a sign of shame to the British...

[ieyasu.livejournal.com]

...that a relatively intelligent American (yes, I flatter myself) can with 5 months practice in the Japanese language walk into a train station, slay the language barrier with mental pitchforks, stride confidently through the ramparts of the toll system with nary a thought that he's paid over or under the price required, possibly outwit the evil Witch of Season Tickets to gain multiple entry rights to yon steamless carriage, and be reasonably certain that he's going to the proper station on the proper train, all in less time than it will take that same American to make a train change at Reading.

Admittedly, this is easier in a station like Umeda where the place names are listed in Japanese and Roman characters, but even in Arashiyama it was easy to find my way around. Those timetables seem designed solely for railway fetishists or old folk who have nothing better to do with their time, a sort of unchanging shipping forecast. I'm afraid that the comment above, 'just another example of someone deciding that the best beta testing is real life' misses the point a bit: beta-testing implies the intention to do a release phase and test the bugs.

My only conclusion is that British Rail, or its various post-privatisation forms since it's not gotten any better since then, is controlled by a cabal of evil wizards who gain their power through the frustration of others. I admit, it seems unlikely, but it's the old Holmesian maxim of discarding all other possibilities: such a brainless system requires more than just incompetence, it demands a level of malice.

(Yeah, I had to take the train this weekend too.)

*suspicious glare*

[venta.livejournal.com]

Are you dissing the shipping forecast ?

Only slightly...

[ieyasu.livejournal.com]

...I'm aware some like it for the soporific effects.