Great Western Coffee Shop

Probably starting a thread over nothing - so apologies if so!

RTT stated that the 0740 PGN to PAD this morning was not stopping at either Starcross or Exeter St Thomas, despite timetabled to do so. I was out with my camera on the Exe estuary this glorious morning and saw the 0740 clearly stop for a couple of minutes at Starcross at its timetabled time of 0825!

Was this a mistake on RTT or did the driver inadvertently stop at Starcross after a decision was made not to stop?

How are last minute changes to the WTT communicated to Realtimetrains?

There were no alterations to this service today.

The train did stop at Starcross and Exeter St Thomas. What you have highlighted however is the limitation of using train describer data for train running information. When signals are located at the ends and just before a station platform, it can have an impact on the information available.

For example at Starcross the signal is just before the platform and as such the HST because it is longer than the platform this impacts on the movement of the train describer to report an arrival, therefore the arrival reports when the train is just departing and the train describer jumps from the signal before the platform to the one after. This causes a pass report, as the arrival is reported as being after the departure.

However at Exeter St Thomas the signal is right at the end of the platform, and again as the HST is longer than the platform it goes past the signal to ensure Coach A is on the platform, this therefore results in a pass report being triggered as the departure report is reported before the train has reported as arriving.

This has been fixed for the next release, see the attachments - not without some assumptions, you must understand though.

Thanks Louise94 for this explanation - I look forward to the next release.

HOWEVER..... Realtimetrains was reporting the train as 'Not Stopping' at both SCS and EXT several minutes before the train actually reached Starcross, which is what prompted my query.

What you are reporting isn't possible, the only way to report a 'Not Stopping' is the way I previously stated.