Station announcements
I got stuck for a while at Clontarf Road about 1830 last night due to the signalling failures.
When I got to the station it said the next southbound train was in 10 minutes, but there was also a message scrolling along to say there were 25 minute delays due to signal fault at Pearse. I tromped on down to the end of the platform and waited, feeling smug that the 25 minute delay was gone since my train was due in 10 minutes.
After a delay a central announcement came on and we were told that trains were running 30 minutes late due to signal faults at Pearse and Howth Junction - the problem seemed to be spreading.
Straight away an announcement came from the ticket office (sounded like it anyway) to say the next train was leaving Howth Junction in 10 minutes. Sigh. Waited. Waited. The trains started flowing out of Connolly with the first one jam packed and the following ones pretty empty. Waited. Waited. Eventually saw a DART coming. Woohoo. Then saw a DART leaving. Boo. What the announcement failed to say was that while the train was leaving Howth Junction, it wasn't going to stop for us. Followed a good 5 or more minutes later by the Enterprise, followed a good 10 minutes later by a DART. I don't know how long the overall delay was (possibly the 30 minutes they predicted) but as usual the platform signage didn't give a realistic time.
I could have walked out of the station, got a bus into town and been home faster. The problem with these generic 'all trains are delayed' messages are that they aren't relative - I don't care if the next train coming in 3 minutes is the 1710 delayed by 34 minutes or the 1744 bang on time. All I need to know is when the next actual train will stop at the platform.
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