On May 9, 2:19 am, keithy wrote:
Well all i can say is that you picked a bad day to travel on this
line. I m a Guard on the Willesden to Claphams and can tell you that
most of the time things hardly happen. You will find that the reason
why trains are usually late is because of the stupid timings awarded
to both Southern and Silverlink from Network Rail and its previous
incumbents Railtrack. If you looked very carefully at the timetable a
Southern service is due to leave Clapham at 03 past the hour from
platform 16 and a Silverlink service is due to leave at 05 past each
hour from platform 2. This is rather pathetic as the Southern service
is always late. A typical 05 service from Clapham is like this:
Leave Clapham right time, stop at first signal to allow late running
southern service to past, then follow the southern on single yellows
normally stopping at the signal protecting West Brompton Stn, and
again stopping short of Kensington Olympia Stn, then continue at a
slow pace untill being stopped just before the pantogarph and third
rail change over point, then stop to change over pantograph and third
rail continue to Willesden Junction. where after all that you will
still arrive on time as their is so much slack in the timings, that is
why when the trains are on time they sit at stations for a couple of
minutes.

Most of the time the train is slow is because it is following another
train and is being driven under cautionary aspects.

keithy



This is a good example of where the journey planners treat stations as
a single point, with a number of minutes for any interchange. This is
particularly odd where the number of minutes is high and the station
is obviously large (or three adjacent stations sharing a name, as with
CJ).

So if you ask for, say, Twickenham to Olympia, the planner will direct
you to the 03 departure despite it being more than two minutes walk to
the furthest possible side of Clapham Junction, rather than go to the
adjacent platform for the 05.