Peter Masson wrote:
"John Rowland" wrote in message
...
Abigail Brady wrote:
On Apr 12, 12:00 am, Dave Nesbitt
wrote:
One delightful idiosyncrasy is that to get to Sutton direct from
Blackfriars you take a train indicated to Wimbledon, and vice versa.
This is one of these cases where the departure boards at Blackfriars
should probably lie about the destination, by giving 'St Helier via
Sutton' and 'Morden South via Wimbledon' (or whatever pair of stations
works out to be the best advice) as the destinations.
There will be several stations for which the best train from Blackfriars
will be the next loop train regardless of direction. If they reduce the
service frequency enough, this would cover the entire loop, removing all
confusion. ;-)

On the standard off-peak service this seems to apply to stations South
Merton to West Sutton inclusive - and on the basis that a train at the
platform is worth two on the departure board, that might well be extended at
least to Wimbledon Chase and Sutton.

The UKRTT does not in fact give any clues that through running takes place,
showing all trains in either direction as terminating at Sutton - and
presumably the xx05 and xx35 arrivals at Sutton via Wimbledon form, after
standing for minus one minute, the xx04 and xx34 departures via Hackbridge.

It plays havoc with the screens and announcements at Sutton.

"This train terminates here", when it is actually going to London in 1
min (though some really do terminate). The system also can't figure out
that if the arrival from Wimbledon is late, the departure for Hackbridge
will also be late.

If this happens, a Southern (pronounced "Sutton" by the tannoy) train
might be put through first. Both Southern and FCC trains can be in
Southern colours, so you have to be very careful when working out which
train you have in front of you :-)

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK