Bradford on Avon - Sunday 17/02/08

[whole diary]

[swlines]

Yes, for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) it is!

On short platforms on Southern, there is a beacon on the end of each platform if it is a short platform (also if differing lengths of platform on either side, or it uses GPS) which tells the train how many doors exactly to open from front. So for instance, let's make up a station, that can take 6 coaches and front set of doors in the next coach.

Train pulls in, gets data from beacon, releases 13 sets of doors. Something all train operators should use IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion).

You didn't mention the downsides. There is two:

1) It takes quite a long time for the doors to register which ones should open so you have to wait before you can get on/off and the station stops take longer.
2) IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) the guard/driver must check that  they have stopped exactly right before they open the doors wasting even more time.

When they were first introduced it took quite some time, yes, but the technology behind it has been refined since and it is pretty much instantaneous. For differing stop markers, there are different beacons. Therefore if you stop short, not all doors will release and so on. Although on short platforms, the stopping marker is generally at the end of platform...

devon_metro, Windows 98. Upgraded last year to allow the system to announce "Coach 9 of 8".