Error'd: That Movie with Whatsisname

This week's special edition is a series of Error'ds specificallydealing with trains, which geeks are for some reason especiallytaken with. It should go without saying that the reason these are predominantly from Europe is not an indication their infosystems are especially bad, but rather as we all know, US passenger trainsare so little used that there is far less opportunity to discover any wtfs.

This entry byRobert G. requires explanation. London North East Rail hasa novel (six years old now but still new to me) point-of-use displayof seat reservations. In my train experience, a reserved seat ticketonly identifies a certain car but not a specific seat, so this ispretty slick. On LNER, if you don't have a seat reservation but you're traveling in the specified class, you can take any seat labelled"Available" but you'll need to vacate it at the "until XXX" station.The two rows in Robert's fuzzy image read "Current" and "Next",which should help to understand what has happened here. The two red lights indicate "Reservations". As Robert puts it,"My train was part cancelled, and a replacement coachwas provided to where it was now starting from. Unfortunatlythe coach arrived a few minutes after the train departed,so a new train was needed. Fortunatly the TOC's (TrainOperating Company) app allows seat reservations to madeup to 10 minutes from departure and the next train was inhalf an hour - given it's a long journey I was going toget a reservation. Apparently several other people hadthe same idea, resulting in two of us getting a confirmation(both email and in app) for the same seat."Apparently Robert reserved Edinburgh->KingsX and a randomcompetitor reserved Newcastle->KingsX at the same time.It seems that LNER's seat reservation application had afailure of transactional integrity. Hopefully it waseventually consistent.

Jaroen van Oo.wrote "I spotted this weird timewarp in the tram this morningfrom Utrecht to IJsselstein, the Netherlands. Not surewhat happened as all the other arrival times werecorrect and as far as I know Hooghe Waerd lies in thesame timezone as the rest of the route." The Dutch textin the black bar means "Next Stop" and "Arrival" inEnglish. My own understanding of Dutch is poor, andso "naar"seems like one of those all-purpose prepositions thatcan translate to almost anything. In this case, I assumeit signifies "the place where this tram is now". So eitherthere was a timewarp or a spacewarp suddenly shunted thetrain to Punta Delgada and back.

FNO Andrew minimized a 46-minute delay, griping"South West Railway. On time 40 minutes late."

Michael R., who we've seen a lot of in these parts,drew our attention to a breaking alert just 21 seconds old. "ABCDEFG1 at 21:06:57 which is before 21:07:18 in Canning Town/London"

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?", asked Sandra von I. "The railways of the Netherlands are great. Fast, cleantrains connecting all the cities and towns of the country.But it turns out that the status displays on board needa little help waking up..."

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