A reader writes...

This from another satisfied Eye reader...

Having seen the weather forecast for the coming week it would appear your ‘Pointless Signs – Banbury’ post of 30 March now looks a little silly.

Get a grip man!

London Overground abolishes timetables

This from http://jonhind.lightbox.com

Looks like London Overground have abandoned the timetable and decided just to tell us when they will give us a train.

This taken at West Hampstead:

No doubt getting rid of all that pesky timetable nonsense will stop passengers complaining about late trains?

UPDATE: This from a Mr JMG...

I think your comment on this is unfair.

Except for very late at night, London Overground is now a turn-up-and go railway and with all trains calling at all stations.

The conventional Network Rail display formats are too complicated and require unnecessary scrolling which means that key information is actually not displayed for much of the time - witness many platform screens taking three pages to show the details of the next train.

I do believe it is much more helpful for passengers to adopt the London Underground practice of showing destinations and minutes to arrival - mostly now for the next four trains - and I am pleased to see that LO (LooRoll, Ed) is progressively switching to this method.

Having said that, your photo clearly shows that there is more work to be done on the details.

This sign at West Hampstead - which looks as if it is located in the booking hall - clearly needs to be further reconfigured to show the two directions separately and to reduce the display from two pages to one so that the most important information (where is the next train going and how long to wait?) is in view all the time.

Railway Children invitation to Cycle India

This from Eye's friends at the Railway Children...


Cycle India takes place 8th to 17th November 2012.

It’s a 480km bike ride from the Taj Mahal to Jaipur.

On day 1 we’ll take you to visit one of Railway Children’s projects, a fantastic opportunity to see first-hand how your fundraising benefits the children. The next day you will move on to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal where you can explore the monument before your biking challenge begins.

Your bike will take you to more remote locations than most other modes of transport, bringing you in direct contact with the country and its people. Once in Rajasthan the region offers dramatic desert landscape, fantastic wildlife, exquisite forts, bustling cities and rural life that seems frozen in time.

Your ride ends in Rajasthan's capital city, Jaipur.

For more information: phone: 01270 757596 or email: events@railwaychildren.org.uk

EMT dismounts desk-jockeys

Let's hear it for a very brave East Midlands Trains!

According to EMT

East Midlands Trains will be closing the doors of its Derby Headquarters for the day on Thursday 5 April, with all of the company’s head office managers and staff getting back to the floor and working at stations and on trains to help passengers with the Easter getaway.

The initiative, which has been named ‘Day of the Customer’, is designed to provide extra support to passengers travelling on Maundy Thursday which is traditionally one of the busiest travelling days of the year.

David Horne, Managing Director for East Midlands Trains, said: “We’re all really looking forward to our first ‘Day of the Customer’ on Thursday. Since recently taking over as Managing Director, I’ve spent a lot of time working with our staff on the front-line to understand more about how we deliver the day-to-day service to our customers. It's really important that we see and experience things as our customers and front-line staff see them and we have to get out of the office to get this experience.

Now there's a dangerous precedent to set!

After all when doctors go on strike mortality rates drop by as much as 50%.

The worse case scenario is that no one even notices that the shiny-bums are missing!

What a saving in executive salaries that would notch up!