In message , at 12:26:29
on Mon, 1 Dec 2014, David Cantrell remarked:
With ungangwayed 4-car units it's not always obvious which one you are
in without getting out and having a look ...
Hence all the "this is coach [pause] 5 [pause] of [pause] 8"
announcements.
None of the (splitting) trains I've been on have that sort of announcement.
I hear it all the time on trains out of Victoria via Eastbourne.
Yes, I think we've established there are announcements sarf of the
river, but that's not the routes I travel on that have splitting trains.

That doesn't matter. That they exist in some places, and that passengers
can cope with having to be in particular carriages to go to some
stations, demonstrates that there is no good reason to not have trains
that are longer than some platforms.

A lot of double negatives there.

When I lived in Nottingham the HSTs only opened about 2/3 of their doors
at Loughborough on account of a short[1] platform. That was announced on
train and people seemed to cope.

I also recall trains at Wokingham that were so long the rear few
carriages routinely overlapped the level crossing and people were
discouraged from leaping out of them.

But neither of these is a case of "splitting trains" where people on the
line I use are told to be "in the front half" on arrival at the
splitting station, without any means to know whether they are or aren't.

As a result it's commonplace to see people getting out of their seats
and onto the platform to have a look.

[1] It used to be longer, until H&S decreed that the bit beyond a rather
low over-bridge was no longer logically a platform.
--
Roland Perry