I have, on severaloccasions, lambasted the Next Train Indicators at Mile End station. Originally it was because you couldn't see them, then it was because some became hidden, then it was because they moved and you couldn't see them from different places. At one point HM Inspector of Railways turned up and urged the removal of a blocking sign to prevent a possible decapitation risk on platform 1. That was sorted but the underlying issue has not changed, which is that you cannot see the time of the Next Train from a substantial proportion of all four platforms.
The chief issue is that there are only four Next Train Indicators and they are all at the far end of the platforms. Walk down the stairs or arrive on a train at the western end of the station and you can easily see when the next trains are due. But arrive on a train at the eastern end of the station and you can see bugger all, this unless you have the eyesight of a hawk and can read small orange letters 100m away. I can't do it, plus the key information like the number of minutes is often hidden behind protruding objects so couldn't be seen anyway.
Four small Next Train Indicators have been added halfway down the platforms, each on the inside of a pillar, these designed to assist platform staff in marshalling passengers during busy rush hour periods. But most of them face west, not east, so can't be seen by anyone in the eastern half of the platform either. The entire Next Train Indicator get-up at Mile End is an impractical mess seemingly installed by cretins.
This regularly proves awkward, generally when changing trains, because you can't tell if the next train is 1 minute away or 11. Usually it's 3 or less but occasionally it's a very big number and you can't tell so you stand there like a lemon on the platform because you don't realise the service is borked. As happened yesterday.
I got off the front of a Central line train and crossed to the District line platform, expecting a train to carry me one stop to Bow Road but unable to confirm this. After a few minutes I started to get suspicious and walked all the way down to pillar 13 to check on the small screen... and sure enough the next train was still 7 minutes away. For Mile End that's disastrous, and it looked like there was then an 11 minute gap coming along behind. Meanwhile on the opposite platform, a 15 minute gap! Nobody in the control room had made any announcements so everyone was just standing there, the eastern half in total ignorance of imminent trainlessness.
The issue arose in 2009 after inept infraco Metronet were given the job of upgrading Mile End station with modern electrical paraphernalia. Their solution included introducing a suspended ceiling to hide all the wiring and other gubbins, but this decision also reduced headroom so it was no longer safe to hang a Next Train Indicator from the ceiling. The boxes were thus all moved to the far end of the platforms where nobody could hit their heads, and suddenly passengers on half the platform could no longer see when trains were coming.
Annoyingly Metronet went bust in 2007 and were taken over by TfL in 2009 before the suspended ceiling was fitted. But because Metronet's plans were so far advanced TfL had no choice but to go along with them, installing a substandard information system while making other aspects of the station better.
What hurts is that Mile End's now been substandard for well over 15 years and nobody's attempted to improve things, bar those tiny boards most people can't see either. Various solutions would sort it, like adding thinner overhead boxes or simply adding Next Train Indicators at the eastern ends of the platforms so everyone could see one. But there must be no money, or no resources, or no willingness, or just an assumption that the current system works when plainly it does not, as those of us who use the station know to our cost.
And so we continue to keep our fingers crossed that a train's coming, hopefully soon, and just occasionally it's not.
