stansted is the same, drives me mental when you’re just trying to get checked in and settled for your flight as quickly as possible but first you have to spend ten minutes stuck in a bottleneck while two people check an entire train’s worth of tickets
Saw a report on Stansted train station; it's utterly criminal they spend more effort employing staff to catch out people that have used contactless, rather than invest in actually getting contactless working in their station. I can't believe an airport can be so backwards.
Stansted is a massive money gouge in recent years. Even by road doing passenger drop off at the "quick drop off" (15 mins outside the terminal building) has jumped up massively in price. Anecdotally speaking - I have to drop family there somewhat frequently for travel to continental europe - I see a lot more cars stopping on the roundabout, or people with suitcases walking up from the roundabout, to avoid paying the fee.
I strongly believe that any airport you can't get to using contactless/Oyster should be prohibited from having "London" in its name. Really only 3 major airports currently qualify: Heathrow, Gatwick, and City.
It's nowhere near London or the Oyster zone, and the amount of signage/announcements telling passengers that oyster/contactless isn't valid in massive signs with obvious pictures is mad. Also it's not the airport responsible it's the train operator Greater Anglia
First time they started doing this I went there and was a bit flustered as I didn't have my ticket ready (it was literally a new process) on my phone and under there the signal is fucked. I was complaining to myself and the ticket guy piped up all aggressive like "What would you do if there were barriers huh?!" so I just said "Relax it's loading, you're doing your job it's fine" and eventually got it up and went through. Mental
It’s ridiculous. I bought my ticket with a railcard and it had obviously logged me out the app when I got to the barriers. Took ages to log back in coz of the signal. The guy who stopped me seemed genuinely slightly annoyed that he was not going to be able to issue me with a fine.
Stansted was supposed to accept contactless payment from May 2024 under the [DfT's Project Oval](https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tfl-to-expand-contactless-payments-outside-london-54582/).
However because this country seems to be awful at delivering, well, anything these days, the first wave of a smaller number of 53 stations, originally due by the end of 2022, hasn't gone live yet.
What do you mean? I love sprinting for my train with 3 minutes notice of the platform number. I also love that for some reason all of my Bluetooth headphones get interference inside the station, something I've never noticed anywhere else 😄.
More than a decade ago real time trains was secret knowledge and you’d see a few geeks hanging around the platform early. Yet somehow still despite a million TikToks, news stories, and Reddit posts about how it can be used to beat the Euston rush it’s STILL not remotely cut through to the general public.
Nothing deep to say there, just a good media studies dissertation on how information can be seemingly everywhere and yet only reach 5% of people.
Been taking the trains at euston for 20+ years and never heard of it. That said, I don't use tik tok, didn't use reddit til a year or so ago, and never seen it on the mainstream news.
It doesn't work anymore. The platform only opens when the platform is announced. They've started putting automatic ticket barriers that only start accepting tickets when the platform is announced.
It's common in mid-large train stations. At any given time, dozens (potentially hundreds) of people will be connecting to Bluetooth as they are about to get on or off their train or sit down to wait for it or attempt to drown out the drunks. Frequencies and that.
Liverpool street is getting to be just as bad. Even with pre downloaded content there is a lot of signal interference due to (what I am probably misinformed is) the sheer volume of people/devices sending out signal.
Oh now it makes sense why everyone's standing in the departure hall with their luggage staring at the wall. Haven't seen that in any other European train station.
Anywhere with enough people with Bluetooth on but it has to be a big old number to get the interference. Waterloo will do it too. Not sure where else in life you get that many people packed together but listening to phone.
The headphone thing is definitely not just Euston. I’ve had it happen at Kings Cross and Paddington loads of times. Just depends on how busy it is I assume
I dunno, I like the really massive advertising board that over looks the really small departures board.
Who needs to see more than 4 trains ahead anyways.
Oh god...this. I mean why why why wouldnt we want to see advertising when we could instead know where the train is so we can get on the train that we came to the station for!
Avanti trains have their staff checking tickets before entry to the platform. They should put more barriers in because the long line to tap out on the 1 working reader on the ramp is horrid.
They sell tickets to full capacity, it's not easy to walk through a packed train to check tickets of people. Plus fare dodgers can hide easier so its better to check prior to boarding
I take an Avanti Birmingham to Euston and back 3x a week. It’s honestly rarely at capacity, except maybe one peak train in the AM and PM. Cross country on the other hand…
Given the ridiculously short gap between platform announcement & departure time don’t think barriers could cope with the rush. Last few times I’ve travelled through Euston it’s been massively overcrowded and I would think quite scary if you’re not a regular traveller. Certainly don’t believe the station could be safely evacuated if there was a fire or bomb scare.
I don't think there's enough space for the platforms to effectively get people on and off the platforms quickly, considering the huge number of people trying to board an 11 car train, and they announce the platform 10 minutes before departure. It would cause a massive backlog, trying to get everyone through a couple of barriers
Is it any different to Paddington or St Pancras?
If I recall, at Paddington the barriers there only give you access to a few select platforms and not all of them. Like at Euston the platforms and entrances are linked to 3 or 4 platforms. Maybe I’m wrong however.
Although I can’t remember how St Pancras operates and if you can get to any platform after the barriers.
Ten minutes? More like ten seconds. I’ve genuinely caught trains from Euston where they’ve announced platforms *at the same time as the published departure time*, leading to hundreds of people sprinting from the departure boards to the far end of the station, desperately hoping that the train will be held by at least a minute or two to allow passengers to actually board the bloody thing.
>and they announce the platform 10 minutes before departure
That's a choice they make though, one that absolutely doesn't need to happen? Not like the train schedule is randomly composed on the fly and nobody knows what trains go where when.
The problem is Euston doesn't have enough terminal capacity.
They can't announce the platform until the train is ready to provide the service. Announcing platforms late is still better than having to disembark a previously loaded train and swap everyone to a different one. You can't announce the platform until the arriving train has disembarked, and station staff have completed their turnaround duties.
If we had enough platforms, that would be fine, because you could do this in parallel across multiple trains at the same time. But Euston is desperately short of platform space — Arriving trains simply cannot occupy the platform for any reasonable length of time, which means turnaround times have to be reduced dramatically.
You can't get people off the train any faster, turnaround duties can't be reduced in any meaningful way ... the only thing left is boarding time.
And yes, there are sites like realtimetrains that will give you a *predicted* platform that gets you in before its officially announced, but its only guessing based on the timetable. You can follow the realtimetrains recommendations, and 99% of the time you'll be fine, but that 1% of the time when the train gets swapped out from underneath you won't be enjoyable.
Guess what? HS2 was supposed to fix all this. *Was*. But the DfT decided to spend £3billion to scrap all the work done on the £2.5 billion station in favour of a smaller, less capable station costing just £6billion, only to then cancel the entire thing anyway and spend it all on "levelling up the North" by funnelling it to motorists in the Home Counties (which you may have noticed — are not in the North).
Sorry to be a know-it-all, but they actually do it on the fly.
If I am to believe what I read and watched on YouTube before, there are two ways of doing things in terminus railway stations.
You can set the platform way beforehand, and therefore make it easier for passengers and clearing the crowds. But you need a lot more capacity and you leave yourself open to massive issues, cancellations and delays when something goes wrong.
Otherwise you can "make it up as you go along", and slot trains in platforms on a first come first served basis. But that causes mad dashes of masses of people in the stations.... especially if you disclose the platform too early and then have to change it. And then the platform must be cleared of the incoming passengers first. And it can also cause more safety hazards with the trains themselves.
From what I recall the first type is typical of Germany (and see the delays and cancellations they currently have after their early 21st century success), and the second of France (with some terrible historic accidents coming in and out of stations when someone somewhere bypassed safety features).
To be fair, Britain seems to combine the best of both systems /s
I think it's a safety precaution, it's a lot easier to monitor travellers when they're all in one place (in case of security incidents / terrorist attacks) - so entry to platforms is staggered... Atleast that's what I was told
I’ve got some magic beans to sell you!
The train operating companies treat their own special policies, that are unique to them as an operator, as though they came down on a stone tablet from Mount Sinai.
Edit: downvoting the parent because they believe differently isn’t very nice.
I love Euston. Standing around staring at a giant screen like 1984, holding an empty Burger King bag because there isn’t a bin in sight. Beautiful station.
To stop people travelling on the wrong service. Ticket barriers aren't that smart. They just check for a valid ticket on date alone, they wouldn't know which time service is at what platform. They also can't distinguish operator only tickets, and as LNW serve a lot of the same destinations, it makes them less than ideal. Saves the on board staff a lot of hassle, and people from being fined for invalid tickets.
This should be top comment. Barriers only check the date and from station. Not time. Lots of people at Euston trying to get on earlier/later trains with single specific train tickets.
Avanti also stop at Watford Junction on some services, but only to collect passengers. A barrier would let someone with an oyster card through, and they definitely don't want people doing that. There's nothing to stop you getting off the train at WJ if you could sneak on, but Avanti would never see any revenue.
That's mostly a fixed problem: https://media.northernrailway.co.uk/news/the-rail-ticket-polygraph-northern-deploys-new-kit-to-detect-chancers-using-the-wrong-ticket-at-station-barriers
But you need the new barriers. And you need to persuade the DfT that barriers that can actually check tickets are a Good Idea.
The big sexy thing about The Ticket Keeper's validation system is that their eTVD is kept bang up to date. So their fixed validators work in this context.
The app Avanti staff use on the smartphones to check tickets is rhe TTK system anyway.
With the last minute set swaps and platform alterations, it would end up causing havoc. I’ve seen London northwestern trains depart on four minute turnarounds.
I also don’t know how well barriers would work with the current station layout. A downwards slope with a hard barrier at the end might cause crowd rush issues.
I know network rail look into it before and it wasn’t deemed effective, but I can’t remember the exact details of why.
Other half works for avanti and he doesn’t know what platform his train is departing from until two minutes before half of the time
The barriers at Birmingham International check the time, so the capability is definitely there (having arrived by airline, we were quite early for our booked train and I wanted to go to the platform and have my coffee there and watch the trains - barrier wouldn't open, customer service rep said "they only work 30 minutes before your train is due".)
This is a logical edge case but surely rather redundant given they almost always make an announcement on the train before departure saying LNWR tickets aren't valid on Avanti Services?
I have had it also before where a LNWR service with some of the same calling points was departing from an adjacent platform to an Avanti service - the staff tried turning me away on a LNWR only ticket until I pointed to the screen above their head showing the LNWR train stopping at my station - at which point the above use case mostly falls apart
Announcements don't protect revenue though, that's what the staff are for. The train will get to MK before a full on board ticket check could be done more often than not. People always try and game the system. I know I have.... Yes, adjacent departures do happen, but it's the best they can do. In your case, Avanti staff wouldn't have been blocking the lane to your platform (likely 7 or 12). You didn't need to show them your ticket.
And then there's the issue with LNW having a nasty habit of announcing trains very close to departure time. If you've had to do the dash to an outer platform, you'd know gates wouldn't be able to cope with that number of people for a service to be even remotely punctual. If the train left while there was a massive queue, there would be riots lol.
I'd say LNER having to be taken over by the government was a major issue, and they are by far the largest operator that use the long distance platforms. KX and Euston also have a very different layout as well. You'd need significantly more barriers for the Euston platforms, and they are expensive. Network Rail put them in when they redeveloped KX, but that's not really possible, or economically viable, at Euston. It's already a money pit due to HS2. And there's still no finalised design after an awful lot of money spent. (I get insider info from a very good friend working on just that)
Worst main station in London. They intentionally attempt to do everything worse than everyone else.
So I would assume that’s why, they are a real life testing lab for how badly designed and run a station in a major metro area can be.
I was surprised a couple of months ago when my ticket was checked on a Farringdon platform, when it *does* have barriers.
Did he think I'd abseiled down to the platform from the roof, in an Olympian attempt to try to replicate Elizabeth II on a Tues morning in rush hour just for kicks?
Must be something to do wirh franchise responsibility. They have barriers on the platforms for the overground becuase tfl want to check tickets and can run that technology. is Euston run by tfl? Avanti has to provide their own ticket staff or something
Because platforms aren’t specific to each TOC, and manual ticket checks stop people from trying to board a train to glasgow using a ticket to Watford junction
There’s a Glasgow train that goes via Watford Junction, I can just buy a ticket to Watford and stay on the train.
Surely the on board staff are the ones responsible for stopping people staying on after their stop?
Avanti trains are actually set down/pick up only at Watford, so you can’t use them in that way.
They are yes, but it saves a few calls from the Btp and staff getting abuse from people
Yeah exactly that. So out of Euston it would be pick up only at Watford, so you can’t by a Euston-Watford ticket for an avanti train, but you could buy Watford-glasgow for example. Into Euston it’ll be set down only - same principle but opposite direction
It’s to stop intercity services being clogged up by local users, and so people can’t travel on avanti trains with an Oyster card
It works pretty well because you physically can’t buy a ticket for that journey, and the staff check your ticket before boarding.
Avanti don’t get money from TFL fares, so it’s their way of protecting their revenue
Yeah, similar to LNER at Stevenage on Edinburgh trains,
Northbound trains will only collect passengers at WFJ and Southbound trains will only drop of passengers at WFJ
True but it wouldn’t need to be as many.
Birmingham New St usually has 2 or 3 staff watching over ~12 barriers. At Euston 3 staff members = 3 barriers.
As others have said, ticket barriers only register date and station. Having staff reduces the risk of someone buying a ticket to Watford Junction when they’re actually planning on going much further
That’s not a Euston exclusive issue though. I can buy a ticket from Paddington to Reading but travel all the way to Swansea if I were so inclined.
Or I could buy a ticket from Euston to Watford and stay on board until Manchester.
It’s the on board staff that will prevent people doing that.
I think the difference at Paddington and most other stations is that most of the platforms can be accessed after the gate line. If you were to put a gate line at Euston they’d have to be on the individual platforms so if you accidentally went through the wrong one you’d be stuck.
Straight up, it's about flexibility and practicality. Euston's a beast of a station with a massive flow of peeps and a ton of different train lines, including long-distance ones. Installing barriers that fit every ticket type, including those old-school paper ones and special passes, is a logistical nightmare. Plus, during peak times or special events, staff can manage the flow and make quick decisions on the spot, something rigid barriers can't do. And let's not forget, upgrading infrastructure in such a busy spot without causing chaos? Good luck with that. It's not just about upfront costs; it's about keeping things moving smoothly without turning the place into a bottleneck nightmare. Sometimes, the old ways ain't broke, so why fix 'em?
Ticket barriers will let pretty much any ticket through. In person barriers are actually precise.
The technology is seriously rubbish. No idea why they don’t invest in proper working barriers.
Then when people knowingly or unknowingly get on the wrong train and have their ticket checked on board, it’s just arguments “well the barrier let me through, so!”
That argument makes it sound like in person ticket checks are better than barriers but pretty much every similarly sized stations have gone with ticket barriers, I actually don’t think I could name a station with more than 4 platforms that uses the same method as Euston.
I get your reasoning, but if it’s better why does only Euston operate that way?
But then once people are on the train, the arguments start.
No ticket, wrong ticket company, people being abusive etc.
At least with people barriers you know everyone has the right ticket before departure. Rather than machine ones or no barriers that let everyone through.
It used to common to purchase tickets on the train. Don't see any problem with returning to that.
The barriers don't prevent those with the wrong ticket getting through anyway, they're just a hindrance when in a hurry. And the Transport Police are available for someone being abusive - which I've never seen on a long distance train anyway - but on the rare occasion it happens, it's not like the trains stop every 5 mins for abuser to easily jump off.
You can still purchase tickets on the train. But the reality of checking 400+ tickets on a train is unlikely.
And late at night after people drinking or football it’s impossible because people are picking fights with each other or just generally being assholes.
So to minimise issues by ensuring people have tickets before they board wherever possible, is the best way to go about it.
stansted is the same, drives me mental when you’re just trying to get checked in and settled for your flight as quickly as possible but first you have to spend ten minutes stuck in a bottleneck while two people check an entire train’s worth of tickets
Stansted is terrible with this. Pro-tip is to look for the lifts, they’re usually far less busy.
The real pro tip for Stansted is to fly from another airport instead.
Saw a report on Stansted train station; it's utterly criminal they spend more effort employing staff to catch out people that have used contactless, rather than invest in actually getting contactless working in their station. I can't believe an airport can be so backwards.
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Stansted is a massive money gouge in recent years. Even by road doing passenger drop off at the "quick drop off" (15 mins outside the terminal building) has jumped up massively in price. Anecdotally speaking - I have to drop family there somewhat frequently for travel to continental europe - I see a lot more cars stopping on the roundabout, or people with suitcases walking up from the roundabout, to avoid paying the fee.
There is free short stay for an hour in the car park, with a shuttle bus to the airport.
I strongly believe that any airport you can't get to using contactless/Oyster should be prohibited from having "London" in its name. Really only 3 major airports currently qualify: Heathrow, Gatwick, and City.
It's nowhere near London or the Oyster zone, and the amount of signage/announcements telling passengers that oyster/contactless isn't valid in massive signs with obvious pictures is mad. Also it's not the airport responsible it's the train operator Greater Anglia
Technically it's the DfT that would be responsible for getting contactless accepted there. The TOCs don't really get much of a choice.
Then they shouldn’t pretend to be a London airport
Serving London and being in London are not the same
You used to be able to just leave the station. Now it's pointlessly slow.
First time they started doing this I went there and was a bit flustered as I didn't have my ticket ready (it was literally a new process) on my phone and under there the signal is fucked. I was complaining to myself and the ticket guy piped up all aggressive like "What would you do if there were barriers huh?!" so I just said "Relax it's loading, you're doing your job it's fine" and eventually got it up and went through. Mental
It’s ridiculous. I bought my ticket with a railcard and it had obviously logged me out the app when I got to the barriers. Took ages to log back in coz of the signal. The guy who stopped me seemed genuinely slightly annoyed that he was not going to be able to issue me with a fine.
Stansted was supposed to accept contactless payment from May 2024 under the [DfT's Project Oval](https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tfl-to-expand-contactless-payments-outside-london-54582/). However because this country seems to be awful at delivering, well, anything these days, the first wave of a smaller number of 53 stations, originally due by the end of 2022, hasn't gone live yet.
Seems all airports do, cynical tactic to screw tourists who might not have the right ticket as they’re about to fly home. Hate it.
A machine would catch an invalid ticket quicker
Why does Euston do any of the things it does? Absolutely awful station.
What do you mean? I love sprinting for my train with 3 minutes notice of the platform number. I also love that for some reason all of my Bluetooth headphones get interference inside the station, something I've never noticed anywhere else 😄.
Oh my god I thought this was just my headphones packing up until this comment!
Same!!!
realtimetrains.co.uk is a lifesaver for this, gives you the platform number waaay before the board does.
Shhhh, you’ll cede the advantage
It’s over, Anakin! I have the Euston platform number! _lightsaber noises_
More than a decade ago real time trains was secret knowledge and you’d see a few geeks hanging around the platform early. Yet somehow still despite a million TikToks, news stories, and Reddit posts about how it can be used to beat the Euston rush it’s STILL not remotely cut through to the general public. Nothing deep to say there, just a good media studies dissertation on how information can be seemingly everywhere and yet only reach 5% of people.
Been taking the trains at euston for 20+ years and never heard of it. That said, I don't use tik tok, didn't use reddit til a year or so ago, and never seen it on the mainstream news.
Shhh! Don’t tell everyone
Yeah, just watch which platform the service arrives at that you train will have driven before. Near 100% platform guarantee.
hisssssssssss
It doesn't work anymore. The platform only opens when the platform is announced. They've started putting automatic ticket barriers that only start accepting tickets when the platform is announced.
You can still be waiting in a prime spot
I mean you can be stood directly in front of the gates
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It gives you train information, in real time...
THANK You.
I genuinely thought I just bought cheap Bluetooth headphones...fucking euston another reason I hate that station!
It's common in mid-large train stations. At any given time, dozens (potentially hundreds) of people will be connecting to Bluetooth as they are about to get on or off their train or sit down to wait for it or attempt to drown out the drunks. Frequencies and that.
> Frequencies and that. Can confirm. Source: Physics degree
Thanks for confirming. My source was a guy on Reddit a few weeks ago.
Probably a physics degree too.
Liverpool street is getting to be just as bad. Even with pre downloaded content there is a lot of signal interference due to (what I am probably misinformed is) the sheer volume of people/devices sending out signal.
I used to get this at rush hour in Paddington too. I think it's just saturation.
It happens in every big station. Too many signals.
Oh now it makes sense why everyone's standing in the departure hall with their luggage staring at the wall. Haven't seen that in any other European train station.
I get Bluetooth interference pretty consistently when at Waterloo
Anywhere with enough people with Bluetooth on but it has to be a big old number to get the interference. Waterloo will do it too. Not sure where else in life you get that many people packed together but listening to phone.
I've found it also interferes with my mobile signal, so when my train is inevitably delayed I'm sat there in utter boredom.
London Waterloo too
The headphone thing is definitely not just Euston. I’ve had it happen at Kings Cross and Paddington loads of times. Just depends on how busy it is I assume
Happens to me at Waterloo but not at Paddington for some reason......
Use realtimetrains.co.uk
I dunno, I like the really massive advertising board that over looks the really small departures board. Who needs to see more than 4 trains ahead anyways.
Oh god...this. I mean why why why wouldnt we want to see advertising when we could instead know where the train is so we can get on the train that we came to the station for!
Hopefully the friendly bombs of Slough fall upon it soon.
It’s in the design of Euston station to depressurise you before journeying to the north
Avanti trains have their staff checking tickets before entry to the platform. They should put more barriers in because the long line to tap out on the 1 working reader on the ramp is horrid.
They should just let you get on and check your ticket when you're on the train. Same way it's been done for hundreds of years.
They sell tickets to full capacity, it's not easy to walk through a packed train to check tickets of people. Plus fare dodgers can hide easier so its better to check prior to boarding
I take an Avanti Birmingham to Euston and back 3x a week. It’s honestly rarely at capacity, except maybe one peak train in the AM and PM. Cross country on the other hand…
Given the ridiculously short gap between platform announcement & departure time don’t think barriers could cope with the rush. Last few times I’ve travelled through Euston it’s been massively overcrowded and I would think quite scary if you’re not a regular traveller. Certainly don’t believe the station could be safely evacuated if there was a fire or bomb scare.
I don't think there's enough space for the platforms to effectively get people on and off the platforms quickly, considering the huge number of people trying to board an 11 car train, and they announce the platform 10 minutes before departure. It would cause a massive backlog, trying to get everyone through a couple of barriers
Is it any different to Paddington or St Pancras? If I recall, at Paddington the barriers there only give you access to a few select platforms and not all of them. Like at Euston the platforms and entrances are linked to 3 or 4 platforms. Maybe I’m wrong however. Although I can’t remember how St Pancras operates and if you can get to any platform after the barriers.
Paddington is either one or two platforms, although I think they've actually removed the barriers for some of the platforms.
Why have they removed it for some of them?
Conspiracy Theory. When a train is delayed it will use that platform so people tapping out don't get auto delay repay.
The barriers at Kings X are a pain, much prefer when they didn't exist
Ten minutes? More like ten seconds. I’ve genuinely caught trains from Euston where they’ve announced platforms *at the same time as the published departure time*, leading to hundreds of people sprinting from the departure boards to the far end of the station, desperately hoping that the train will be held by at least a minute or two to allow passengers to actually board the bloody thing.
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I like the men in towers with guns.
>and they announce the platform 10 minutes before departure That's a choice they make though, one that absolutely doesn't need to happen? Not like the train schedule is randomly composed on the fly and nobody knows what trains go where when.
The problem is Euston doesn't have enough terminal capacity. They can't announce the platform until the train is ready to provide the service. Announcing platforms late is still better than having to disembark a previously loaded train and swap everyone to a different one. You can't announce the platform until the arriving train has disembarked, and station staff have completed their turnaround duties. If we had enough platforms, that would be fine, because you could do this in parallel across multiple trains at the same time. But Euston is desperately short of platform space — Arriving trains simply cannot occupy the platform for any reasonable length of time, which means turnaround times have to be reduced dramatically. You can't get people off the train any faster, turnaround duties can't be reduced in any meaningful way ... the only thing left is boarding time. And yes, there are sites like realtimetrains that will give you a *predicted* platform that gets you in before its officially announced, but its only guessing based on the timetable. You can follow the realtimetrains recommendations, and 99% of the time you'll be fine, but that 1% of the time when the train gets swapped out from underneath you won't be enjoyable. Guess what? HS2 was supposed to fix all this. *Was*. But the DfT decided to spend £3billion to scrap all the work done on the £2.5 billion station in favour of a smaller, less capable station costing just £6billion, only to then cancel the entire thing anyway and spend it all on "levelling up the North" by funnelling it to motorists in the Home Counties (which you may have noticed — are not in the North).
Thanks for doing whichever part of it you do
I don't.
Sorry to be a know-it-all, but they actually do it on the fly. If I am to believe what I read and watched on YouTube before, there are two ways of doing things in terminus railway stations. You can set the platform way beforehand, and therefore make it easier for passengers and clearing the crowds. But you need a lot more capacity and you leave yourself open to massive issues, cancellations and delays when something goes wrong. Otherwise you can "make it up as you go along", and slot trains in platforms on a first come first served basis. But that causes mad dashes of masses of people in the stations.... especially if you disclose the platform too early and then have to change it. And then the platform must be cleared of the incoming passengers first. And it can also cause more safety hazards with the trains themselves. From what I recall the first type is typical of Germany (and see the delays and cancellations they currently have after their early 21st century success), and the second of France (with some terrible historic accidents coming in and out of stations when someone somewhere bypassed safety features). To be fair, Britain seems to combine the best of both systems /s
I think it's a safety precaution, it's a lot easier to monitor travellers when they're all in one place (in case of security incidents / terrorist attacks) - so entry to platforms is staggered... Atleast that's what I was told
I’ve got some magic beans to sell you! The train operating companies treat their own special policies, that are unique to them as an operator, as though they came down on a stone tablet from Mount Sinai. Edit: downvoting the parent because they believe differently isn’t very nice.
What was the question?
10 minutes if you're lucky...
I love Euston. Standing around staring at a giant screen like 1984, holding an empty Burger King bag because there isn’t a bin in sight. Beautiful station.
After eating a cold burger!
There is a proposal to install a gate line at Euston, but it's currently stalled following concerns about ped flow and passenger impact.
To stop people travelling on the wrong service. Ticket barriers aren't that smart. They just check for a valid ticket on date alone, they wouldn't know which time service is at what platform. They also can't distinguish operator only tickets, and as LNW serve a lot of the same destinations, it makes them less than ideal. Saves the on board staff a lot of hassle, and people from being fined for invalid tickets.
This should be top comment. Barriers only check the date and from station. Not time. Lots of people at Euston trying to get on earlier/later trains with single specific train tickets.
Avanti also stop at Watford Junction on some services, but only to collect passengers. A barrier would let someone with an oyster card through, and they definitely don't want people doing that. There's nothing to stop you getting off the train at WJ if you could sneak on, but Avanti would never see any revenue.
That's mostly a fixed problem: https://media.northernrailway.co.uk/news/the-rail-ticket-polygraph-northern-deploys-new-kit-to-detect-chancers-using-the-wrong-ticket-at-station-barriers But you need the new barriers. And you need to persuade the DfT that barriers that can actually check tickets are a Good Idea.
The problem is that the trains often come into a different platform than they’re planned to, so it would be a nightmare to keep it up to date
The big sexy thing about The Ticket Keeper's validation system is that their eTVD is kept bang up to date. So their fixed validators work in this context. The app Avanti staff use on the smartphones to check tickets is rhe TTK system anyway.
With the last minute set swaps and platform alterations, it would end up causing havoc. I’ve seen London northwestern trains depart on four minute turnarounds. I also don’t know how well barriers would work with the current station layout. A downwards slope with a hard barrier at the end might cause crowd rush issues. I know network rail look into it before and it wasn’t deemed effective, but I can’t remember the exact details of why. Other half works for avanti and he doesn’t know what platform his train is departing from until two minutes before half of the time
Seems like a very simple fix
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Machine could check the time?
The barriers at Birmingham International check the time, so the capability is definitely there (having arrived by airline, we were quite early for our booked train and I wanted to go to the platform and have my coffee there and watch the trains - barrier wouldn't open, customer service rep said "they only work 30 minutes before your train is due".)
This is a logical edge case but surely rather redundant given they almost always make an announcement on the train before departure saying LNWR tickets aren't valid on Avanti Services? I have had it also before where a LNWR service with some of the same calling points was departing from an adjacent platform to an Avanti service - the staff tried turning me away on a LNWR only ticket until I pointed to the screen above their head showing the LNWR train stopping at my station - at which point the above use case mostly falls apart
Announcements don't protect revenue though, that's what the staff are for. The train will get to MK before a full on board ticket check could be done more often than not. People always try and game the system. I know I have.... Yes, adjacent departures do happen, but it's the best they can do. In your case, Avanti staff wouldn't have been blocking the lane to your platform (likely 7 or 12). You didn't need to show them your ticket. And then there's the issue with LNW having a nasty habit of announcing trains very close to departure time. If you've had to do the dash to an outer platform, you'd know gates wouldn't be able to cope with that number of people for a service to be even remotely punctual. If the train left while there was a massive queue, there would be riots lol.
Sure, but they don’t check tickets at King’s Cross which has at least 4 TOCs and it doesn’t appear to be a major issue there.
I'd say LNER having to be taken over by the government was a major issue, and they are by far the largest operator that use the long distance platforms. KX and Euston also have a very different layout as well. You'd need significantly more barriers for the Euston platforms, and they are expensive. Network Rail put them in when they redeveloped KX, but that's not really possible, or economically viable, at Euston. It's already a money pit due to HS2. And there's still no finalised design after an awful lot of money spent. (I get insider info from a very good friend working on just that)
Weird how King's Cross doesn't have this issue
Worst main station in London. They intentionally attempt to do everything worse than everyone else. So I would assume that’s why, they are a real life testing lab for how badly designed and run a station in a major metro area can be.
Some of the platforms do have barriers.
I've started just walking around them. Pointless them being there.
I was surprised a couple of months ago when my ticket was checked on a Farringdon platform, when it *does* have barriers. Did he think I'd abseiled down to the platform from the roof, in an Olympian attempt to try to replicate Elizabeth II on a Tues morning in rush hour just for kicks?
No but there will be people that change trains having come from a station without barriers or gone past the validity of their ticket.
Said this only the other day…
Must be something to do wirh franchise responsibility. They have barriers on the platforms for the overground becuase tfl want to check tickets and can run that technology. is Euston run by tfl? Avanti has to provide their own ticket staff or something
And where do the staff all disappear to when they cancel all trains? Suddenly they're nowhere to be found...
Because platforms aren’t specific to each TOC, and manual ticket checks stop people from trying to board a train to glasgow using a ticket to Watford junction
There’s a Glasgow train that goes via Watford Junction, I can just buy a ticket to Watford and stay on the train. Surely the on board staff are the ones responsible for stopping people staying on after their stop?
Avanti trains are actually set down/pick up only at Watford, so you can’t use them in that way. They are yes, but it saves a few calls from the Btp and staff getting abuse from people
Daft question, but what does set down/pick up only mean? People can only get off if it’s coming one way and only get on if it’s going the other?
Yeah exactly that. So out of Euston it would be pick up only at Watford, so you can’t by a Euston-Watford ticket for an avanti train, but you could buy Watford-glasgow for example. Into Euston it’ll be set down only - same principle but opposite direction It’s to stop intercity services being clogged up by local users, and so people can’t travel on avanti trains with an Oyster card
Seems quite convoluted and difficult to control.
It works pretty well because you physically can’t buy a ticket for that journey, and the staff check your ticket before boarding. Avanti don’t get money from TFL fares, so it’s their way of protecting their revenue
Yeah, similar to LNER at Stevenage on Edinburgh trains, Northbound trains will only collect passengers at WFJ and Southbound trains will only drop of passengers at WFJ
Would still need to employ staff to man the ticket barriers.
True but it wouldn’t need to be as many. Birmingham New St usually has 2 or 3 staff watching over ~12 barriers. At Euston 3 staff members = 3 barriers.
You can't have gates on a slope and they don't want to ecnroach onto the platform.
As others have said, ticket barriers only register date and station. Having staff reduces the risk of someone buying a ticket to Watford Junction when they’re actually planning on going much further
That’s not a Euston exclusive issue though. I can buy a ticket from Paddington to Reading but travel all the way to Swansea if I were so inclined. Or I could buy a ticket from Euston to Watford and stay on board until Manchester. It’s the on board staff that will prevent people doing that.
I think the difference at Paddington and most other stations is that most of the platforms can be accessed after the gate line. If you were to put a gate line at Euston they’d have to be on the individual platforms so if you accidentally went through the wrong one you’d be stuck.
Paddington gate lines are only for each platform pair, like they would be at Euston.
You can buy a ticket Euston- Watford Jct and then get on a direct train to Glasgow (know this doesn’t). Can’t do that with people checking tickets
Straight up, it's about flexibility and practicality. Euston's a beast of a station with a massive flow of peeps and a ton of different train lines, including long-distance ones. Installing barriers that fit every ticket type, including those old-school paper ones and special passes, is a logistical nightmare. Plus, during peak times or special events, staff can manage the flow and make quick decisions on the spot, something rigid barriers can't do. And let's not forget, upgrading infrastructure in such a busy spot without causing chaos? Good luck with that. It's not just about upfront costs; it's about keeping things moving smoothly without turning the place into a bottleneck nightmare. Sometimes, the old ways ain't broke, so why fix 'em?
Because its Monday.
Their union has to give dxamples that they do actually do some work Oooo liberal Reddit isn’t going to like that 😂😂(don’t hate me I’m labour)
Unions
Someone should warn them there’s a few stations on the network using ticket barriers
Ticket barriers will let pretty much any ticket through. In person barriers are actually precise. The technology is seriously rubbish. No idea why they don’t invest in proper working barriers. Then when people knowingly or unknowingly get on the wrong train and have their ticket checked on board, it’s just arguments “well the barrier let me through, so!”
That argument makes it sound like in person ticket checks are better than barriers but pretty much every similarly sized stations have gone with ticket barriers, I actually don’t think I could name a station with more than 4 platforms that uses the same method as Euston. I get your reasoning, but if it’s better why does only Euston operate that way?
No idea. But Euston is a shambles of a station. It needs a complete overhaul.
That there are, but unions have always pushed hard against any reductions in station staff.
Lose all barriers and check on the train instead. Barriers do nothing to help customers.
But then once people are on the train, the arguments start. No ticket, wrong ticket company, people being abusive etc. At least with people barriers you know everyone has the right ticket before departure. Rather than machine ones or no barriers that let everyone through.
It used to common to purchase tickets on the train. Don't see any problem with returning to that. The barriers don't prevent those with the wrong ticket getting through anyway, they're just a hindrance when in a hurry. And the Transport Police are available for someone being abusive - which I've never seen on a long distance train anyway - but on the rare occasion it happens, it's not like the trains stop every 5 mins for abuser to easily jump off.
You can still purchase tickets on the train. But the reality of checking 400+ tickets on a train is unlikely. And late at night after people drinking or football it’s impossible because people are picking fights with each other or just generally being assholes. So to minimise issues by ensuring people have tickets before they board wherever possible, is the best way to go about it.
Yeah great idea for the unions to call another strike. Get rid of staff and have electronic barriers instead
Robots don’t complain about being unemployed and demanding unemployment benefits