Greetings.

In article news wrote:
"Tristan Miller" wrote in message
...

What is it about British railway stations that prevents them from
assigning
platforms to trains in advance, as it is done elsewhere? Is any work
being
done to fix this problem?

They do assign platforms to services in advance. They just don't publish
the details though. Please don't assume that the day's arrivals and
departures at somewhere like Waterloo are randomized - it just couldn't
work like that.

Well, I didn't think it was completely random. But it's sufficiently
irregular as to be unpredictable for riders. I know, for example, that the
NXEA London Liverpool Street--Chigwell service usually departs from
Platform 3, but it's quite common for it to use any of the other first five
platforms. So if I'm waiting for the service, I'll wait near the gates to
the lower-numbered platforms rather than the higher-numbered ones.

There are 'carriage working notices' published 6 monthly with the
timetable
change, and they DO allocate a platform for every service. But as soon
as they have a significant delay (such as yesterday's jumper in the
morning
peak) it goes pear shaped. As soon as that happens, anything on
published notices becomes misleading.

OK, so maybe I should revise my question to "Given that both British and
continental railways allocate platforms well in advance, why is it that
continental railways are able to publish these allocations and generally
stick to them even in the event of delays?" I used the Deustche Bahn for
years when I was working in a German city, and while delays were not
uncommon, platform changes were almost unheard of. I can't think of a
single occasion on which my train departed from a platform other than the
one listed on my ticket, even when I had bought the ticket days or weeks in
advance.

Regards,
Tristan

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