train direction and departure time

Well, um, if you know you know, if you don't there's no obviously generalisable way to work it out. If you can see the tracks of both directions, then you can use the fact that trains almost always run on the left to work out which direction they will come from. If you can see a signal, that will be at the departure end, although in some locations there may be a wrong-road signal or a fixed red light at the other end as well. Um, hard to know what else to say, when it's on its way you should be able to hear it and see the approaching headlights and that will let you know. Before that point, there's no obvious reason why you would need to know which direction it's coming from.

Of course, all that being said, if you know which side of the tracks the platform is on you can work it out, but you may have to just know that, it wouldn't necessarily be easy to deduce, although in some cases you could work it out, particularly from the journey you took to the platform. Obviously you can use tools like carto.metro.free.fr/cartes/metro-tram-london/ but I'm really finding it hard to see why you would need to.


When the door chimes sound. Sorry if that sounds like a sarcastic, or smart-alecky response, but I recommend walking purposefully around tube stations and not running. If the doors start to chime before you're basically about to board, stop and wait for the next one. Treat the chimes like yellow traffic lights. Stop unless unsafe to do so. Apart from that there's not really any way, although if you can see that the starter signal is red, that's useful information. Other than that, on the Central line, when the dot matrix indicators (DMIs) flash up with *mind the doors* it means that the train is about ready to go, I think it starts flashing when the countdown timer reaches 10 seconds to go, but that number might be wrong.

ATO lines don't have signal repeaters because they don't have conventional starter signals. The deep tube lines had (or at least tended to have) platform repeaters when they had colour light signals and I believe the Picc still has them in the general case. In the case of the Northern and Jubilee they don't have signals at all, so no repeaters, but there are ready to depart indicators (RTDIs) on many platforms, which light up with a bright white light when the train has a target point. They can be quite hard to see, though, aren't always provided, and apparently it's necessary to start closing the doors when the countdown timer reaches a certain point (seven seconds?) even if there isn't a target point, on the Northern, or the train will end up late.

www.flickr.com/photos/24772733@N05/5347207514/

The Central has the *mind the doors* thing on the DMI, but no platform repeaters. I'm not entirely sure why, since it does have starter signals, but presumably the different technology made platform repeaters less easy/appropriate/useful.

Train doors can close whenever the operator presses the close buttons. They can definitely close before a green signal or a target point is given. However certainly on the lines with starter signals it is procedure to wait for a clear signal before closing the doors.


Um not really. The Dot Matrix Indicators work on a mixture of using the timetable to predict when, say, a train from Epping is likely to arrive at Theydon Bois, and the track circuits etc. telling the system that the train has reached a point that is, if everything goes according to plan, x minutes' journey time away. It's hard to see how you could do better my memorising the intended service frequency.

I wish the Central would get rid of the Mind the doors line - because you then can't see when the next train is coming or heading for!