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

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Ouch. :-(

Does Reading not have those boards listing destinations one by one with the details of the trains which go to each destination? I'd be surprised if it didn't. On the other hand, far fewer of these signs indicate platform numbers these days than used to be the case. Perhaps there is some secret revolution in platform assignment methodology in progress, or perhaps they're just being slack about things. I know which of those options I'd put my money on.