Stopping a train with a tweet

[Martin Swanson]

Could someone confirm how the schedule change for the MHM stop was processed - did it appear in the VSTP ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/southern-rail-twitter-new-station-merstham-severe-delays-a7033616.html

Thanks

Martin

[Matt]

MHM was added to this journey in Darwin via a system called Tyrell. Many of the Train Operating Companies have access to Tyrell through their information management teams or equivalent.

I don't know about VSTP because I don't use the NR data at the moment. :)

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Martin

On 18 May 2016, at 07:09, Martin Swanson <martind...@gmail.com> wrote:

Could someone confirm how the schedule change for the MHM stop was processed  - did it appear in the VSTP ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/southern-rail-twitter-new-station-merstham-severe-delays-a7033616.html

On TRUST, 2C94 on the 16th shows as a variation schedule from TSDB (so from the CIF), and doesn’t have Merstham as a calling point or timing point.  The TOC could, if they wanted to, add this to the schedule by altering the schedule on TRUST - and no message would be generated to say the schedule was amended - the only way you’d be able to tell was that you’d get an additional report for a station not in the schedule you have which is not “OFF ROUTE” or “OUT OF PLAN”.

If these additional stops were planned some hours in advance, the TOC could have created a VSTP schedule from the schedule already in TRUST, with the additional stops, then ‘called’ (activated) the VSTP schedule and/or cancelled off the original schedule.  However, that’s not possible when the train’s running, and if the train’s already been activated and you cancel it, then add a VSTP schedule and activate that, it’s likely to confuse downstream systems.

So in this case, using TRUST data, you’d not know the train was planned to make additional stops until they happened - if they were added to the schedule.  If they weren’t, you’d never know - how can you tell the difference between being stopped at a red signal at a station for three minutes, and a train making an additional call?

This is why I have no hesitation in recommending Darwin for providing passenger information.  It gets around many of the things TRUST can’t do.

Peter