With the delays, I could somehow understand if they can't announce arrival platforms... but departure platforms?... Maybe turnaround time is too short, or departure platforms are re-shuffled as a function of arriving trains, or they gave up and don't plan in advance at all.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

In Madrid, when they rebuilt the train station at Atocha they turned the kept the old station building as an annex to the new one, and turned it into a tropical garden. The advanced-purchase ticket counters is on one side of it. It's beautiful.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

I've had some conversations with a station supervisor for the Long Island Rail Road at Penn Station.  He tells me that the higher-numbered tracks (in the States, what the British refer to as a "platform" is what we call a "track," they assign a different number to each platform face) the Long Island trains use are rigorously assigned, and commuters can literally stumble down their usual staircase to their usual seat without checking the departure boards.  Amtrak, which generally uses tracks 8-14, and New Jersey Transit, which uses the lowest numbered tracks including the stub tracks 1-4, tend to be somewhat more cavalier about assigning trains to tracks, in part because Amtrak interference with New Jersey Transit trains affects the latter's ability to anticipate the next move.  (Further complicating things, the two tracks in the tunnel to New Jersey belong to Amtrak.  At least two of the tracks under the East River belong to the Long Island.)

Elsewhere in the States, track assignments can be more predictable.  Metra in Chicago uses the same philosophy as the Long Island, and lots of harried commuters can get to their trains without looking.

If memory serves, the British are sometimes unpredictable about assigning tracks, er, platforms.  In my trips there, I encounter little knots of riders looking at the screens for the number to be posted.

Stephen Karlson ATTITUDE is a nine letter word. BOATSPEED.

:-)))) must have been a sight... hopefully SBB (or BLS or which one was it) lost no passengers due to this :-)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}