Scotrail

[itzdrk]

On 21/08/2019 at 17:48, Bairnardo said:

Can just imagine the conversations across the country....

"Got a spare ticket for the rugby m8, you fancy it?

"No"

 

[Marshmallo]

7 hours ago, IrishBhoy said:

 

How would you like Scotrail to react in this situation? They are dealing with an above average amount of passengers through Edinburgh due to the Fringe/Rugby and are advising that their service will be busy. There will be plenty of opportunities to talk down Scotrail but this isn’t one of them. 

 

1 hour ago, IrishBhoy said:

It was a perfect storm of problems on the track coupled with a larger than usual volume of people wanting a train. I laugh at some of the complaints made to Scotrail on twitter when people say can you not just lay on more carriages/trains. You can’t just flood the tracks full of trains, there is schedules that need to be ran to, staff that need to be put in place as well as getting drivers out to drive the trains. I don’t see what more Scotrail could have done. Their customer service through twitter is actually very good and they do a good job of notifying passengers when they encounter problems. 99% of the time the delays are down to signalling issues or other issues with the rail infrastructure, which has absolutely nothing to do with Scotrail. If the train itself breaks down then fine, blame Scotrail, but it’s Network Rail who deal with the tracks and signals and everything else that goes along with it. Scotrail run and maintain the rolling stock, and put the staff in place to run the trains, that’s it. 

^^^^^ works for Scotrail

[Scary Bear]

Scotrail should really just get the Rugby and Fringe cancelled and it would be a breeze.

Why do you all want to go places anyway? Poor old Scotrail.

[welshbairn]

18 hours ago, IrishBhoy said:

I laugh at some of the complaints made to Scotrail on twitter when people say can you not just lay on more carriages/trains. You can’t just flood the tracks full of trains, there is schedules that need to be ran to, staff that need to be put in place as well as getting drivers out to drive the trains. I don’t see what more Scotrail could have done.

I mainly agree with you but it's not like they didn't have any warning that it might get a bit busy.. Schedules can be and often are temporarily changed. And they can't claim to have no responsibility for the industrial action which made things worse,

Edited August 27, 2019 by welshbairn

[Savage Henry]

 

Why do you all want to go places anyway? Poor old Scotrail.

 

Because we want to experience their new trains, which apparently have been the craze sweeping the nation for the last six months.*

 

 

*Except for on their longest routes.

[CountyFan]

I'm normally pretty lenient with Scotrail but it really was fucking horrendous on Saturday night. I got to waverley well before the last train deliberately because I knew it would be busy. Arrived at 9.45, finally got on a service to dunblane (for Larbert) after 3 cancellations at11.30 or so. The platform was frankly dangerous by that time, there was no effort to stop folk piling on to the platform even though it was clear that not all would get on the train. It's a miracle that nobody ended up on the tracks with all the pushing and stuff going on and there were no staff, no police and no announcements of any kind. I tried to line myself up with where I thought a door would be, no fucking clue how the hundreds of folk who never made it on got home because it wasnt on scotrail rail replacement buses. 

I appreciate it was busy and was expecting to have to wait but it at least needs to be safe for folk and it wasn't. 

[NorthernLights]

10 hours ago, Savage Henry said:

 

Because we want to experience their new trains, which apparently have been the craze sweeping the nation for the last six months.*

 

 

*Except for on their longest routes.

I'm not keen on their "new" trains after my weekend.

Travelled to Glasgow from Aberdeen on Thursday after work on one of their much hyped HST.  The train never managed to leave Aberdeen due to a fault and I had to wait an hour for the next Glasgow train which was thankfully one of their "older" trains.

This evening I took the train back to Aberdeen from Glasgow and it was an HST again.  The guy doing the announcements prior to departure was telling us how much room there was and if we didn't like our reserved seat then feel free to move about.  Once again the train failed to even leave its departure station due to a fault.  We were ushered onto a two carriage train which was a little less roomy!  Annoyingly the train arrived in Aberdeen about 26 minutes late so I don't have the pleasure of at least recouping some of my fare.

    

Edited August 26, 2019 by NorthernLights

[jamamafegan]

My train was 24 minutes late last night - so no refund for me. Luckily though I didn’t buy a ticket and the gates were open at both stations. Get that up you Shiterail.

[flyingscot]

14 hours ago, CountyFan said:

I'm normally pretty lenient with Scotrail but it really was fucking horrendous on Saturday night. I got to waverley well before the last train deliberately because I knew it would be busy. Arrived at 9.45, finally got on a service to dunblane (for Larbert) after 3 cancellations at11.30 or so. The platform was frankly dangerous by that time, there was no effort to stop folk piling on to the platform even though it was clear that not all would get on the train. It's a miracle that nobody ended up on the tracks with all the pushing and stuff going on and there were no staff, no police and no announcements of any kind. I tried to line myself up with where I thought a door would be, no fucking clue how the hundreds of folk who never made it on got home because it wasnt on scotrail rail replacement buses. 

I appreciate it was busy and was expecting to have to wait but it at least needs to be safe for folk and it wasn't. 

It appears that a train failed between Haymarket and Linlithgow and there was a trespass incident. Crosscountry cancelled some of their trains too which wouldn't help. Surprised they kept the station open- the time problems happened at Glasgow Central on a Saturday night last year, the Scotrail staff scarpered due to abuse and BTP cleared the station and shut the gates. 

I think more needs to be done in the planning of these events all round. The Fringe has made things busy enough, but to allow a full house rugby match was madness and to a lesser extent Hibs were playing as well. When stuff like that is on at Cardiff and Newcastle, both their stations have restrictions getting in for ages after. 

[CountyFan]

55 minutes ago, flyingscot said:

It appears that a train failed between Haymarket and Linlithgow and there was a trespass incident. Crosscountry cancelled some of their trains too which wouldn't help. Surprised they kept the station open- the time problems happened at Glasgow Central on a Saturday night last year, the Scotrail staff scarpered due to abuse and BTP cleared the station and shut the gates. 

I think more needs to be done in the planning of these events all round. The Fringe has made things busy enough, but to allow a full house rugby match was madness and to a lesser extent Hibs were playing as well. When stuff like that is on at Cardiff and Newcastle, both their stations have restrictions getting in for ages after. 

It was clearly a perfect storm and like I said, I am sympathetic to that. But you cant have literally thousands of people standing on cramped platforms waiting for trains that aren't coming. Its madness. 

[eez-eh]

Surely it’s up to ScotRail to stop selling tickets and letting people onto platforms when it’s obvious they’ve ran out of space.

[Muzza81]

47 minutes ago, eez-eh said:

Surely it’s up to ScotRail to stop selling tickets and letting people onto platforms when it’s obvious they’ve ran out of space.

While I agree with the latter how the hell do you "stop selling tickets". Thousands of people will have purchased day returns in the morning, it isn't like everyone will be turning up for a train at 10pm without a ticket.

[gannonball]

16 minutes ago, Muzza81 said:

While I agree with the latter how the hell do you "stop selling tickets". Thousands of people will have purchased day returns in the morning, it isn't like everyone will be turning up for a train at 10pm without a ticket.

Majority of which will be day returns. As soon as it goes above a certain amount of purchases then contingency plans should be in place including a restriction on machines at certain stations.

Edited August 27, 2019 by gannonball

[Muzza81]

15 minutes ago, gannonball said:

Majority of which will be day returns. As soon as it goes above a certain amount of purchases then contingency plans should be in place including a restriction on machines at certain stations.

What number though? So people that want to buy a day return at travel in the afternoon will not be able to get tickets either AND be accounted in your calculation for even though they have already travelled?

[gannonball]

Just now, Muzza81 said:

What number though? So people that want to buy a day return at travel in the afternoon will not be able to get tickets either AND be accounted in your calculation for even though they have already travelled?

In english please.

[Muzza81]

24 minutes ago, gannonball said:

In english please.

I got all excited talking about Scotrail. What number do you cap the tickets at? If you cap tickets you will be stopping people from travelling even at times when it is quieter.

[gannonball]

1 minute ago, Muzza81 said:

I got all excited talking about Scotrail. What number do you cap the tickets at? If you cap tickets you will be stopping people from travelling even at times when it is quieter.

A number where the remaining capacity of trains is far less than the return tickets yet to be activated at the gates. This should only be a last minute plan for safety though. However Scotrail have struggled for years to grasp that events that tens of thousands of people are attending will require extra capacity. 

[flyingscot]

2 hours ago, CountyFan said:

It was clearly a perfect storm and like I said, I am sympathetic to that. But you cant have literally thousands of people standing on cramped platforms waiting for trains that aren't coming. Its madness. 

I agree, Waverley isn't great at coping when things go wrong and hard to queue people. 

57 minutes ago, gannonball said:

Majority of which will be day returns. As soon as it goes above a certain amount of purchases then contingency plans should be in place including a restriction on machines at certain stations.

I don't think Scotrail would be permitted to do that under the rules, and I'm not sure there is a function for knowing that in real time- you have 3rd party sellers, you have ST holders, network tickets etc. It takes the statistics people a long time to work out the train usage at stations and even they are partly guessing.

[Muzza81]

Plus tickets that are valid for 30 days on some routes. It would be nigh impossible to implement. 

[welshbairn]

When I was in London and railway or tube stations got too busy they just closed the gates for people entering. Happened quite often. Presumably they don't have the procedure in place here, with staff and police knowing what to do.