I’ve just seen Kevin off on the train to Sacramento for the holiday weekend. He’s not taking his laptop, so he won’t be able to blog about this, but I’m sure he wants to.

Our local train station, being a mere halt on a long-distance Amtrak line, doesn’t get much attention. The line is single-tracked for much of its length, but there are two platforms here. One of them is much too short for a full train. This tended to slow boarding, so Amtrak have come up with the clever idea of only using only the one platform. Except that sometimes they need to use the double track to allow trains to pass. So in the past you boarded on Platform 1 for San Jose and Platform 2 for Sacramento. Now you always board on Platform 1, except when you don’t. Naturally the notices that tell you this are small and well hidden, and anywhere there are no signs to tell you which platform is which. And the public address system doesn’t say which platform to use. The station is, of course, unstaffed.

The net result of all this is that people end up waiting for trains on the wrong platform. And there is no means of crossing the tracks except at the grade crossing at the end of the platform, which is often blocked by carriages. So what tends to happen is that people who are stood on the wrong platform see the train coming in, figure that they might not be able to get to it, and run across the tracks in front of the oncoming train.

We almost had an incident like that today. Thankfully the people concerned had more sense. Also the train driver saw that they were on the wrong platform and made sure he pulled in as far as he could. Then the conductors (they had two) made sure that the missing passengers had made their way onto the right platform before closing the doors. The line isn’t very busy so the Amtrak staff can take a relaxed attitude to such things. In the UK, of course, anyone on the wrong platform is liable to miss the train, but then we have good signage and announcements.