Elimination of stops to catch up time was not well communicated
There were numerous reports during the evening of trains missing stops on their way out of London – and of the failure to communicate this to passengers already on trains in time.
@Se_Railway your train has missed all the stops and we have no idea where we are going. 18.20ish train from LB via Greenwich. PLEASE HELP — Sunny Seabrooke (@sunnyseabrooke) November 18, 2014
Speed restrictions delaying @Se_Railway trains, yet my train skipping Greenwich as now ‘fast service’. What the hell?! #lame — Tony Stewart (@RockIsSponge) November 18, 2014
@Se_Railway on my 20 min late train & now find out you’re missing out 5 stations and too late to push off train, #arseholes #southeastern — Manicvemap (@manicvemap) November 18, 2014
@Se_Railway why would you cancel 1 Gravesend train and stop the next one before it ever gets to gsend. I’ve been at charring x an hour now. — Ben Allen (@benjambles) November 18, 2014
@Se_Railway hi, loads of us just found ourselves at Charlton after the train ran fast from London Bridge. Didn’t hear an announcement. Late. — Jenni Cooper (@WeeJen) November 18, 2014
@Se_Railway why did the 6.15 slade green service miss out maze hill? I’m now at Woolwich waiting to go back the way I came, ridiculous. — Joe Henderson (@JoeHenderson2) November 18, 2014
Presumably stops were being eliminated so that the trains could catch up time. That seems a rather train-focused way of operations. In the evening peak there would be a lot of people for those stops on those trains; there would be fewer passengers to be inconvenienced if the trains were delayed on their return journey to London. In addition cancelling the stops caused some people to leave the trains at London Bridge, adding to the over-crowding there. Some passengers suspected that stops were being cancelled so that the trains arrived earlier at their final destinations and so helped ‘massage’ the performance figures. We believe that the performance measures are supposed to take account of missed stops – but it is difficult to check that they have been reported accurately if the train seems to have reached its final destination.
Wow. Just, wow. Excellent article. I trust David Statham has circulated this to all staff to assist in their learning….
15 minutes ago our lights went out, along with all neighbours. We have had two texts from the power company telling us what the problem is and when it will be fixed.
Latest info is below. Why can’t SER do that?
Update at 23:35 – Our engineers are on their way. We believe the issue to be due to an underground cable fault. We can usually fix a power cut within 2 hours, so we hope to have you back on by 01:00. We’re often able to re-route power remotely around problems of this nature so you may be back on sooner, or your power may go on and off. We’ll better understand the cause and update you when engineers are on site investigating.