Twice in the last couple of weeks the eastern end of the District line has gone very wrong and trains have had to be turned back at Plaistow. Both times it was unplanned, and both times I found myself at Plaistow trying to get home in the face of limited helpful information.
The first time it happened, due to signal damage at Barking, I entered Plaistow station just after everything had gone wrong. All the platforms were trainless and a lot of people were trying to work out what on earth to do. The next train indicator on platform 1 insisted a westbound train was 9 minutes away, always nine minutes away, which it wasn't. The next train indicator on platform 2 insisted an eastbound train would be here in six minutes, but it never would be. No helpful announcements were forthcoming so dozens of passengers waited for trains that weren't coming until eventually the penny dropped. When a train eventually pulled into distant platform 3 I deduced it would probably be heading back west, and hiked over, and was eventually rewarded with a homebound journey. I don't know how everyone else got away.
Last Thursday evening the disruption was identical but had already been going on for a few hours. A member of staff had written a brief message on the board in the ticket hall, and a long detailed announcement was being broadcast every couple of minutes suggesting doubling back to West Ham and catching c2c from there. But anyone with a poor command of English was really struggling, and the next train indicator on platform 3 was entirely blank which didn't help because that was the only platform any trains were leaving from. When a terminating train finally pulled in I was surprised to see about 100 passengers pouring off and leaving the station to continue their journey by bus. Plaistow is an entirely useless station to catch a bus from if you're hoping to head further east, indeed not one of the four bus routes that passes Plaistow goes to any other station on the District line. But nobody had told anyone this so they were just about to find out the hard way, thereby making a bad journey considerably worse.
Anyway, forget the minutiae, what really struck me on both occasions was that no member of staff was on hand to help, advise, cajole or direct. They might have been behind closed doors doing important tasks, they might have been hiding, or they might never have existed because some stations aren't generally staffed of an evening. But nobody was available to say "there are no trains from platform 2, the signs are wrong" or "yes, that train on platform 3 is going to Olympia" or "a bus really isn't going to help you here sir". This is what happens when you make excessive cuts to staff numbers and something unexpected happens - hundreds of passengers left to their own devices and inconvenienced - because misleading displays and disembodied messages really don't cut it.
