[v] Flinders St station stuff-ups - AGAIN

[Mick Stock <mzs@nospam.bigpond.com>]

This is getting way beyond a joke..... 
I challenge ANYONE who works at Hillside to come up with the REAL
explanation for the following:

Who is responsible for what trains are switched to what platforms at
FSS?

This afternoon, I had to catch a train much earlier (about 3 hours) than
normal - at about 3pm, they couldn't make up their minds what trains
were leaving what platforms (plat. 2, 3, & 4).  Some trains which
normally leave from plat. 4 were switched to 3, trains which should have
been using plat 2 or 3 were switched to 4, the display screens were
TOTALLY out of sync with actual train movements, and even station staff
didn't have a clue what was going on!

For example, at about 14:55, the 15:05 (15:04??) Glen Waverley was
sitting at plat. 2, was announced as such, but the screens indicated
"not taking passengers", and the doors were closed, so no-one could get
on anyway. The 15:01 Alamain train was sitting at plat. 3. At 14:58, the
14:59 Lilydale was announced as "departing plat. 4", and passengers were
only given a one minute warning of this fact.  Considering the mess that
plat 2/3 is in at the moment, moving everyone from 2/3 across to 4 is a
major pain the the a..., so why did they do it?

And why the hell can't they stop changing what platform a train is going
to leave from?  As a typical example (and one which happens almost every
day on some services):

One minute, the screens show that a train going to Lilydale will leave
from plat 2, then a few mins later plat 3, then back to 2. In the
meantime, the train arriving on plat 3 ends up being the Lilydale... Or
worse still, the train arriving on plat 4 will be the one!  In the
meantime, the screens on plat 2/3 will often be turned off!  With the
so-called construction works, which restrict access for a large part of 
platforms 2/3, further delays are triggered while passengers attempt to
move from one side to the other with the limited access caused by the
construction works.

It is also quite common for a train to be delayed, because another train
which is due to leave AFTER the scheduled earlier train was given access
to the platforms first (which is also what happen this afternoon)!  

Most days, I catch either the 18:04 (which may as well be rescheduled to
18:11, as it rarely leaves before then!), the 18:14 Belgrave (usually
leave 18:16), or the 18:22 Lilydale from FSS.  The trains are almost
always late, arrive at the other end even later. Even at this time of
the evening there is almost always platform swapping as in todays
example above (mainly between 2 & 3, but occassionally switched to plat
4 or even plat 1).  And of course, I usually end up missing bus
connections due to the late running, resulting in 30-40 min wait for the
next bus....

This is sloppy running, and can not be justified.  At no time was there
any indication of signal problems, as trains were using all platforms
concerned (and switching tracks quite normally).

And when are they going to FIX THOSE USELESS BLOODY
SCREENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can ANYONE explain how many years ago, when everything was done manually
(computers weren't used for that sort of thing in the 50's/60's/early
70's(?)), there were less problems than now.  With modern technology,
these problems shouldn't be happening, except for when there are genuine
equipment failures, and yet in real life, things are going downhill very
fast.

Mick.