The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station Strange things are afoot at Brighton Station as football fans keen to make the journey to London to see their team take on England's finest instead found themselves destined for Addr = 67 (43h). While the background of the image supplied by an eagled-eyed Register reader might show the impressive architecture of Brighton …
> Good Enough programming paradigm.
The Good Enough *System* paradigm.
The only programming we see here, for certain, is a board giving debug information: "there has been a failure somewhere, here is what I know about myself".
This is a GOOD failure mode: the sign is clearly NOT giving wrong information to passengers, who may mutter rude words but probably have other boards that are working that they can rely on. Note: RELY on, as a failed board is clearly failed. The engineer can easily understand that info (we all figured out most of it) and use it to diagnose the problem and the fix.
The board has not just gone black - so the power is okay, it is not being communicated to...
WHY? Is *that* a software problem, or is it a hardware problem? *We* don't have any info on that, from the picture. But TFA -and the quote you responded to - don't claim the entire signage system is down.
Is 95% of the time good enough?
That is an issue for the System Requirements - it may well be More Than Good Enough according to them.
Having said that, as others here do, I recall fondly clacky flaps, and even wooden signs put up by hand by a human who could actually help you (Hampden Park was only stopped at after the train had gone past, reached the terminus and then returned going the other way - and the gent would warn you of this).
In-bus displays seem to be particularly prone to problems. My latest photo in this collection is a blue screen of "your computer needs recovery" from Schippol taken 10 days ago, although since it was taken with the camera of a cheap phone it's not worth sending in.
I've seen this many times over the years, usually London Victoria but at others with similar boards.
At one point all of them on Platforms 1 through 7 at Victoria were showing it at the same time, sometimes cycling between blank, config page & then a board before repeating.
> I've seen this many times over the years, usually London Victoria but at others with similar boards.
Likewise, I've seen this particular failure on the boards like that at Leeds. I've also seen the white-on-blue screens in the waiting rooms get caught by the on-board watchdog, which IIRC showed a boot screen disclosing that svgalib was responsible for its graphics.
I particularly enjoyed the trial of the Tensator Virtual Assistant -back in 2014, apparently- which had the occasional bork of its own (that particular Louise isn't Leeds' but I didn't stop to take pictures at the time).
I remember when Paddington went "digital" with the platform signage.
Every daily commuter was instantly up in arms about how unfriendly it was because there was no audible notification that the signage had changed - the noise of the flippy-panel signs updating could be heard across the concourse, so everyone could ignore them and get on with other things, until they heard the noise and could then check their trains.
Now everyone is permanently staring at the boards which update silently and without any warning.
My father was most upset about it, and tbh I think it contributed greatly to his slide into luddite-hood.
I've just had an idea. Why not bring back the old signs, digitised of course but flip signs on a large screen with sound effects so everybody knows when they are changing and for the deaf, connected to your phone app that vibrates when the signs change.
Quite I few things were just done better in the past. Just because it's new and shiny doesn't mean it's better.
This reminds me of when the first talks about EVs in Formula One were going on. There were apparently comments that the atmosphere at EV races wasn't the same because the cars are so much quieter. The proposed solution was to fit all EVF1 cars with a device that simulated engine noise.
Personally I think it would be more appropriate to encourage the spectators to shout "NEEEOWW!" whenever a car went past. Or at least, more fun to watch.
Yes, when they first went "digital" they first tried LCD/TFT-type displays and I thought the same. Sure enough they all started to fail with various screen burn symptoms. I thought at the time whoever spec'd those needed shooting. Then they switched again to the current orange dot matrix style which seem to be much more reliable apart from when they throw these occasional baud rate burps and I have a wry smile to myself.
It's touch-sensitive jobs that pitched me into being a proud Luddite.
Twiddle a dial and the ring comes on? Nonono it's far more modern now. You touch the ON thing, then touch the ring selector thing, then press - or + and fiddle with it till it reaches the heat you want. Then a while later you take the lid off the pan to stir it, splash some water on the controls, and stare on hatred as it goes BLEEEP and shuts down forcing you to dry it off and start all over again.
All the while suppressing the urge to smash it with a lump hammer.
Once watched a fly walk across such an electric hob and switch the thing on. Not a ring, just the general "on" button. Nevertheless, for the rest of the time we lived with that hob it was switched off at the Big Red Switch as soon as it was finished with (and to heck with the "watch out I'm still hot" lamps) and the keys were locked when in use, particularly if simmering.
And then #2 offspring met his first induction hob and being used to gas was utterly frustrated by some of its features - such as shutting down a ring if you moved a pan a little too much off centre or - shock, horror - lifted it off for any reason (say to pour something out) and then refusing to re-enable said ring for several minutes. Safe to say, not a fan.
M.
The last time I was in Brighton catching a train back to London ISTR the signage would show the next train to London, sure enough, but if you were travelling to London the last thing you would want to do is to board that train, as it stopped at every station en route. No, you waited for the next train which seemed an eternity later which only stopped at East Croydon, overtaking the other one and arriving considerably earlier.
Paddington's solution to a similar problem was/is to show all trains terminating at Reading to show their destination as Twyford.
The next generation of digital signage should IMHO show, as well as the departure time, more importantly the arrival time at your destination. Some stations, such as London Bridge and Clapham Junction have a complete matrix of stations on their network with the "Next Departure to...", so just a simple change to the sort order is needed ;-)) [Now, where do I send the invoice?]
Last time I left Paddington on the GWR I noticed that at Reading the on-platform signs not only listed the names of the called-at stations (as is quite common these days) but also the expected arrival times at those stops. Never seen that before.
Of course, what those of us travelling to stations West of Swindon are really waiting for is the Grand Union service to start up which will not be stopoing at RDG or SWI at all thus avoiding the bane of our escape from the smoke - commuters hogging all the seats.
M.
Same here at Waterloo where the flippy-panel signs went the length of the concourse. It was a LOT less stressful waiting for the audible clue to look up from your paper to see if your platform had been announced.
The tension is palpable at Victoria as some of the platforms are a good distance away from the main concourse and I'm convinced there is going to be a major incident one day at the barriers.
This is quite simple passenger information. Addr = 67 means that you have to turn to page 67 of Michael Portillo's book of British railway journeys to find where the train is going. The brackets inform you that journey time will be 43 hours. As for the dot matrix info boards on the train, how else are they going to inform you that a trolley service is available for tea, coffee, sandwiches, crisps, etc, etc? Apart from the 10 minute tannoy announcement listing every single item available of course.
You jest, but Southern Region trains used to just have a two-digit indicator on the front showing what service was arriving. The "loop" services from Waterloo didn't help, where the train starts and ends its journey at Waterloo, there being more than one loop that it could be traversing.
(The local equivalent of) National Snail proposed doing away with the old printed schedule boards. You'd just have to "use the app" (what, on the old feature phone?). Public outcry halted that plan, for now. I'm glad, y'all know why. In fact sometimes I long for the paper schedule book back, because that lets me get a better picture of alternatives than having some website shit out one custom itinerary.
My most recent run-in with them was with the ticketing machines, though. One end of the station had one broken one, and one that, er... it looked to be functional but wasn't: It thought its screen was rather bigger than it was so the "choose your payment method" button, normally at the far right end of the touchscreen, ended up hiding well out of sight. No choice, no payment, no top-up.
Trying to catch a train, this shenanigan ended up being rather bad for my blood pressure. I'm afraid I quite lost it there for a moment. I did phone in the problems, and got the FMCG-treatment for my trouble. Still took them well over a day to fix, but this one machine they did eventually fix. So, had to walk to the other end of the station, where I did get my card topped up, enough to be allowed to commence travel, at the one functional ticketing machine out of four available. No, no person at a ticket counter in sight, hasn't been one around for years. Such are the joys of privatisation.
The impact non-functioning machinery has varies a lot, and next to not working hard enough to make sure it works when you(r customers) need it, there's not nearly enough care and attention (or any at all) spent on just how much impact it has when the machinery has a hiccup, and how to mitigate its impact.
Yes, I got that - 4 ticket machines at Stevenage with what looked like a partial restart screen. It was lucky that the lady behind the ticket counter was functional.
As for train info, the National Rail app is ok for departures and arrivals but is totally borked for planning any journey in the future. The Greater Anglia app does that for me, even for other bits of the UK.
For the more adventurous, traksy.uk and signalmaps co uk provide interesting info about train movements, and realtimetrains co uk does timetables and real time updates if you know the headcode.
You could try https://int.bahn.de/en. In the past I have found it to have a better grasp of UK train timetables than any UK site.
I feel your pain and totally agree.
It's this shit world we currently live in where fewer and fewer people whos job it is to give a f***, just don't.
Three cheers for those remaining people that take a pride in seeing whatever they are responsible for, working like a well oiled machine.
Now I'm getting back in my time machine and travelling back to 1840.
I'm old enough to remember griddle cars. 50 years ago, my brother and I (travelling round Scotland on a rail rover ticket) took breakfast on the Royal Highlander out of Inverness. Toasted bacon sandwiches and unlimited refills of toast and tea, while Aviemore and the Pass of Drumochter flowed past the windows - hard to beat. ISTR there were griddle cars on a few of the southern electrics from London, too,. BR dining cars weren't all curly sandwiches!
I think, in fact, he waged a successful campaign to have kippers restored to the breakfast menu on the Brighton Belle - an all-Pullman service that staggered on until 1972.
Incidentally, the BBC has periodically filmed an accelerated version of the London-Brighton service and has a version with 3 different eras side by side in which the different indicator technologies can be clearly seen near the start.
According to a documentary I saw last week ( Secrets Of The London Underground - at about 24 minutes in) those were not printed planks, but hand painted. They even had a metal edging where it was inserted into the post to prevent wear. All this from an age where we made things to last.
For interested younger readers who don't remember the mechanical departure boards, search for "Split Flap Displays" or "Solari" boards.
Mine's the anorak with my notebook in the pocket --->
I worked on the project that originally commissioned the dot matrix versions which are now in use throughout the underground. My contribution was the coding of a process called CPTQ (Control Point Train Queue) which showed what trains were due to arrive at designated Control Points along the line within the next 15 minutes. My immediate boss did the processes which dipped into my lists and actually displayed them on the dot matrix train describers. This worked very well, but one day we had a Really Top Boss ringing us up from Leicester Square station to complain that, on the Northbound was shown a train with a Kennington destination on it. My Top Boss straight away replied that this was perfectly correct because the train was still travelling southbound with a destination of Kennington on it. When it went round the Kennington loop then yes, it would receive a proper Northbound destination on it. RTB was not happy with that, so we had to predict from the Programme Machine roll where the train was scheduled to go.
The real bugbear for me is the displays that show the next train as 'cancelled' while simultaneously scrolling through all the intermediate stations what it will no longer be stopping at.
IF IT'S CANCELLED THEN IT'S NO LONGER THE NEXT TRAIN!!
Give me details of the NEXT train that's going to arrive, as I might have an alternative plan. The cancelled train can go on the bottom of the display for those who missed the announcement
(I did try complaining but got a 'tough!' boilerplate reply)
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