On 21 May, 11:58, David Cantrell wrote:
The barriers are most likely to be down when a train is very near the
station. *By which time you will already be at the station if you have
any sense, so it's obviously not meant to help people catch their
trains :-)

It's a full barrier crossing, so the gates come down long before the
train arrives. I believe the crossing has to be visually declared
clear, and if it isn't, the train needs to have time to stop. So it's
going to be closed for a couple of minutes before your train is due.
Add in the possibility of another train coming the other way closing
the crossing even earlier, and it's clearly possible to be there in
plenty of time and still miss your train.

Why not have the bridge go diagonally across the level crossing so that
it really does link the two platforms?

Because that would need an enormous bridge, and would get in the way
of the crossing barriers. The bridge they've installed is a standard
design identical to the one at Greenhithe.

U

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