Great Western Coffee Shop

(Perhaps this would be better in a different board; mods please move if appropriate)

Yesterday I went to Freshford from Temple Meads (well, Clifton Down actually but that bit's not relevant) on a Cardiff to Portsmouth train. Waiting on Platform 11, the display said "Calling at: Front 3 coaches [list of all stations]; Rear 2 coaches [list of all stations to Westbury]". There was also an announcement that the rear 2 coaches would be detached at Westbury. Great; but also the first problem, because which are the front 3 coaches? The train reverses in Temple Meads but if you don't know that, you'd be at the wrong end. There's plenty of time to move up (or is it down?) the train between there and Westbury, but it's a bit inconvenient, especially with luggage. Wouldn't another method of carriage identification be useful, like numbering/lettering? Or at least station staff telling people waiting on the platform which end is which?

There was a little bit more to the message on the platform display. It told passengers for Avoncliff to use the very first carriage. We were going to Freshford though, where the platform is longer, so no problem. But no! Because the conductor (guard/TM/whatever) came through telling everyone getting off at Freshford to go to the very front of the train. Although the platform is about two and a half carriages long, it seems they can only open the very front door independently, not carriage by carriage. So why was this only mentioned for Avoncliff? (We didn't actually stop at Avoncliff in either direction; I hadn't realised it was still a request stop. But that's by the by!)

While waiting for the train back in the evening, we walked down the platform to look at the garden there. Very pretty it is too. I'm not sure if it's looked after by GWR staff or villagers but whoever it is, they've brightened up the station a lot. So we were down the end of the platform (about half way along actually) when the train came in. Again only front door opening of course, but this time I felt the conductor was (politely) chivvying us a little. "Are you taking this train, sir?" Well, yes, I could walk a bit faster and left to myself I would, but I was with my dad, who's 82 and has a squeaky hip so simply can't walk faster. He doesn't look 82 and is generally in very good health so people don't realise this, but there it is. Not our intention to delay the train. There was also a family with lots of bikes on the platform – they didn't catch our train but I did wonder how they would have coped getting all those bikes through the one door and where they would have put them.

So, let's have fuller information on platforms please, a way of telling which carriage is which and possibly one day some cleverer door opening. [/list][/list]

Background ...

Class 153 / 150 / 158 don't have selective door opening (SDO) ... it's one door or all doors, with the option of opening extra doors from the platform via an extra lever.  We're very familiar with this procedure at Melksham, and the time it takes to get significant numbers of passengers in and out through one door set.

I doubt whether SDO will come to these units - however, there's plans to lengthen a number of platforms to 5 carriages as a sideshoot of the electrification and cascade program; I'm not sure if Freshford is included in that program.  But that will make things somewhat better at many places.   With regards information, I totally agree with you about "front" and "rear" of train announcements at Bristol Temple Meads - and even at other stations it's pretty confusing for first time users who don't know which way the train's going.  At least I haven't heard "rear two coaches will be detached at Westbury" on a train that's two coaches in the first place at Bristol recently ...

I'm not sure how often a 5 car train calls at Freshford?  Could be an unusual situation, but still would be good to have the extra announcement.

There is a similar suituation with Cambrian line services (which generally run to/from Birmingham which means a reversal at Shrewsbury). I think platforms the Cambrian services generally use now have a board part way along them saying something along the lines of 'coaches beyond this point for Aberystwyth', but the announcement is still made as well (or was when I last used it quite some time ago) which could confuse passengers as to which is the front of the train. There is probably also potential for passengers to board the wrong portion at stations before Shrewsbury. At least the guard can come through after Shrewsbury and get you to move along the train if you are in the wrong part of it, this is one of the reasons I feel that guards are essential and that portion working shouldn't be allowed on trains without UEGs (Unit End Gangways).

Selective Door Opening, that's the term I was looking for.

I don't know, but it's not just 5 cars that cause a problem. The train coming back was (I think) 3 car, so again it was the single 'special' door behind the driver's cab (I presume it has some manual lock or something). While we were waiting for that, a 2 car train bound for Weymouth called at the other platform and (it looked as if) all the doors opened as normal.

Still a problem for people with large luggage (or bikes, like the family who didn't board) or the disabled etc. Clearly better than being left in the wrong part of the train though!

As an aside, is there any technical difference in railway terminology between car, carriage and coach? They seem to be used interchangeably but there might be some distinction which escapes the layman.

Many, many years ago I remember getting on a train at one of the intermediate stations on the Tonbridge - Hastings line. The ticket office was closed (it probably only opened for the morning peak). On the platform there was something like a temporary bus stop, with a sign saying "please board the train here". Train pulls in, and this board lines up with the last door on the unit. Boarding, we (3-4 passengers) find that the guard has got a ticket machine clamped to the first table inside the coach/carriage/car. We form an orderly queue and buy our tickets, then go forward into the rest of the unit. It always struck me as such a sensible arrangement. Of course, that may explain why it was never adopted more widely.

Coaches on these services are lettered, so no reason not to refer to them!

If the platform can accommodate a 2 car train then all doors can be released. However as SDO isn't present on these units its one door or all of them. Nothing inbetween. I'm guessing if all doors were released on a 2 car, but not a 3 car then the platform has a maximum 2 car length.

I don't think it matters which single door is openned; at a normal stop where the train is fully platformed the guard will open a single door first and have a look at the platform before unlocking the rest of the doors. I think they can do that with any door on the train (so it doesn't always have to be the one nearest the cab that opens at a short platform), but I could be wrong.

I think it's any door which has the control panel for the guard to unlock the rest of the train doors. I seem to recall reading somewhere that some of the 2nd Generation DMU's were originally only fitted with these in the cabs, but were retro-fitted at each door in order that the guard didn't need to make their way to either end to operate the doors, which turned out to be a tad inconvenient...

But in practice the guard* is making his way to the front of the train every time this has to be done. And so are the passengers.

*Guard? Conductor? TM? Whatever the term is. It's as bad as car/coach/carriage except I'm sure there is a real difference between guard, conductor and train manager!

Thanks for posting, Bmblbzzz.  :)

As the discussion has shown, there are wider considerations here, so I've just moved this topic to 'across the west'.

Where it's single door, it tends to be at or near the front, even if the guard (conductor, train manager)'s based further back.   That's so the driver can judge his stop at the front of the platform rather than having to guess a carriage (car, coach) or two further ahead.

Sorry, my point was that it was inconvenient in normal use where the guard may be at any point in a train, needing to control all of the doors for a normal station stop where the entire train is accommodated in the platform.