On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:03:44 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

In article , nmtop40
writes

snip

Is there nobody there with intelligence who can re-direct one train
when that happens so you would have 2 to Edgware 1 to Barnet, 2 to
Edgware instead of 5 to Edgware.

It's not that simple. You end up with trains in the wrong place for the
rest of the day's service, drivers unable to get to the right train, and
so on.

How are the destinations decided

There is a complete timetable for the line which shows exactly where
each train should be and when. All the destinations for a train for the
whole day are preplanned.

But presumably not with strings of four or five trains going to one
terminus and no service to the other for twenty minutes or more! That
and the dot-matrix displays -- currently about as good at predicting
the future as goat entrails -- are two of the more entertaining
aspects of the service at the mo'...

Would it not be possible to dynamically redo the timetable during the
day, to take account of changes occuring after the start of play? I
appreciate that this is non-trivial, and I expect there are a lot of
implications for rostering, but it's the sort of thing that might be
feasible with today's IT that wasn't just a few years back.

Perhaps some modern-day Mr Beck could thrash it out on his home PC
before demonstrating it to management?

R