...But I would have assumed that Dandenong had more of an urgency for upgrading than Frankston?

It does, but Gippsland trains also run on the same tracks

Who said that?
Who said it had to run on the same tracks?
IMHO, during peak, Gippsland trains should be terminating at Dandenong, so they aren't soaking up paths. Compensate this with suburban expresses to Cranbourne to meet the Gippsland trains at Dandenong.

Daly Waters -  Well to get around that for Up trains that form through services to Frankston or Werribee could they still retain those numbers but somehow have the Destination box on the front of the train rotate as Flinders St/Frankston or Flinders St/Werribee ? There must be some way around the problem.

Too much playing around to achieve that result on destos due to DDU numbering issues as dalywaters highlighted.

Better to use supplementary signboards and manual announcements.

Smart passengers used to know Williamstown through routed with Sandringham. And that was never advertised.

Another option would be to reorganise the TDN system so that within a certain batch of numbers, rather than even=up and odd=down, you could have even=eastbound and odd=westbound.

Rather than messing around with the TDN allocation register, or allocating up number to down trains etc, it's completely possible for the system to recognize, say, 4802 as an Up from Frankston stopping at whatever stations, and show "Werribee" on the headboard. At Flinders street, the driver on the werribee trip keys in his werribee TDN of 5821.

As the connection would presumably be "guaranteed", the Inital greeting and stop pattern announcement can be programmed to announce the complete pattern from Frankston to Werribee.

The only caveat is that if a transposal were made and the train wasn't going  to through route then the driver would have to be notified to be able to tell passengers and blank the headboard so as not to give the impression it would through run.

Bloody good idea I say!

Agreed.

Would this mean that the train would be announced as 'Limited express to Werribee via Flinders Street' at Frankston and in vice-versa? This will confuse travellers on the Frankston line as all trains stop all stations until they reach the Newport to Laverton section.

If going by ’tomohawk’s’ concept, the announcements are flexible, and better to record them as:

‘This is a Flinders St direct service, interconnecting to the Werribee line, stopping all stations’, to be announced from Frankston to Flinders St.

Then from Flinders St, ‘Limited Express Werribee service, running express Newport to Laverton’.

Another extreme concept is to rename the 20’ cycles to display ‘Bayside Line-Werribee’, and ‘Bayside Line-Frankston’, and advertise them to the public as ‘Bayside Flyers’. This way, customers can identify it as a definite Flinders St, Southern Cross thoroughfare. The destos can display two line messages as shown by the current ‘Not taking passengers’.

In the latter case, you would have ‘This is a Bayside Line service to Werribee via Flinders Street’. This is even more confusing than the first option.

I’m not too sure what the driver’s stance on checking the PIDs are, but many customers who have disabilities, and tourists rely on such information. The more information you display, the more people are likely to depend on this, and expect it to function 100%.

Rather than messing around with the TDN allocation register, or allocating up number to down trains etc, it's completely possible for the system to recognize, say, 4802 as an Up from Frankston stopping at whatever stations, and show "Werribee" on the headboard. At Flinders street, the driver on the werribee trip keys in his werribee TDN of 5821.

The new XTraps are smart enough to change headboards at Southern Cross on down (outbound) Burnley Group services - it is all just computer code, the expensive bit is testing the changes, then implementing to every train...

Rather than messing around with the TDN allocation register, or allocating up number to down trains etc, it's completely possible for the system to recognize, say, 4802 as an Up from Frankston stopping at whatever stations, and show "Werribee" on the headboard. At Flinders street, the driver on the werribee trip keys in his werribee TDN of 5821.

The new XTraps are smart enough to change headboards at Southern Cross on down (outbound) Burnley Group services - it is all just computer code, the expensive bit is testing the changes, then implementing to every train...

Comengs do it too. Many times I have seen the headboard change from City Loop to Flinders Street on an Up via loop on announcement of arrival at Parliament/Flagstaff (first loop station, depending on which loop!). I think even the old x'traps can do it. Siemens definitely do not.

Would this mean that the train would be announced as 'Limited express to Werribee via Flinders Street' at Frankston and in vice-versa? This will confuse travellers on the Frankston line as all trains stop all stations until they reach the Newport to Laverton section.

It shouldn't be a problem to program it to be an All stations to Flinders Street, then limited express to werribee.

I dislike the term Limited Express, but that's a topic for another conversation.

I dislike the term Limited Express, but that's a topic for another conversation.

Especially when they're so limited that they might as well be an all stopper...

The Lilydale UP limited expresses frequently skip only three stations (excluding East Richmond) which saves two minutes end to end...

They should be called limited stop services - or in peak hour - stops between stations!

First weekday on the new timetable. First experiences of new/changed services? Teething problems?

Any through-route trains should remain the same with regards to PIDs. No different from an Up Lilydale displaying Flinders Street, then becoming a Glen Waverley via Loop at night. Too hard for some drivers to type in a number these days? Use the K.I.S.S. system on the PIDs.

As for Ringwood-bound 'limited expresses', it still takes 40 minutes to get there since the stations it skips are about 400m apart, with the sole exception being the 2002 Up Belgrave being crossing off Heatherdale, Mitcham, Nunawading and Laburnum. That is the only decent express on this side of the network, as well as the Richmond to Box Hill whenever they decide to run that. Express trains between Richmond (and Glenferrie) and Camberwell running at 50-60km/h are useless only saving a few minutes.

It's not just the Lilydale line which has useless 'mini-expresses', Werribee trains skipping South Kensington but still going via Altona, and Caulfield group trains skipping the whole of Armadale-Toorak-Hawksburn is just as pathetic.

North Melbourne - Moonee Ponds is another one. Only saving of time is skipping Ascot Vale as up until Newmarket the speed is 65kmh max. On the new timetable though, there only seems to be 5 in (which only one beholding the title of a true express), and a lone useless one out.

Well I'm really unhappy with the new timetable.  Under the June-October version an express and a stopper were scheduled to arrive at Malvern at the same time at 9.20 and 9.33... but in reality of course there was always some variation so if you missed one you were almost certainly able to catch the other.

The new timetable has (off the top of my had) stoppers at 9.16 and 9.28 and expresses at 9.20 and 9.33.  Whilst I initially thought this wouldn't be so bad what I have found is that all the overcrowding issues solved by the first timetable change have returned under the new timetable and it's particularly bad on the Siemens.  Whereas I could almost always (9/10 get a seat) I've not only not had a chance in hell of a seat I've been crushed into other standing passengers & barely got into the carriage.

Not only that, but whilst last week I was lauding Metro because we had a full week where almost every train arrived on time, yesterday was at least five minutes late and today we got to Flagstaff ten minutes late (9.56 instead of 9.46).  To add insult to injury they had already closed off one of the escalators and killed the speed so it was really slow getting up to William Street... AND my myki played up for the first time in forever.

All in all  NOT a good commute today and I am VERY unimpressed with the effect the new timetable is having on my trip in to work.  The on time running should hopefully improve but it's the overcrowding I'm most annoyed about.  It must be coming from Caulfield.

It's not just the Lilydale line which has useless 'mini-expresses', Werribee trains skipping South Kensington but still going via Altona, and Caulfield group trains skipping the whole of Armadale-Toorak-Hawksburn is just as pathetic.

The Werribee trains aren't an issue, as half of them are expresses by default, as they go via the Geelong line.

It's not just the Lilydale line which has useless 'mini-expresses', Werribee trains skipping South Kensington but still going via Altona, and Caulfield group trains skipping the whole of Armadale-Toorak-Hawksburn is just as pathetic.

The Werribee trains aren't an issue, as half of them are expresses by default, as they go via the Geelong line.

The best trains on the Werribee line are the Werribee-Hoppers-Laverton-Newport-Footscray-North-Southern-Flinders.
The 7:49am from Werribee is one of these, It gets into Flinders Street around 8:30'ish.
I have trouble believing the Laverton project will do anything to take passengers off of the Werribee lines, It's quite common for people to continue standing on the platform when a next-to-empty train rolls into Laverton, continuing on via Altona, Whilst the already near full Direct rolls in and everyone tries to cram onto it.

I think the 7:49 should have Laverton removed from the stopping pattern as to force people onto the empty trains.

I like the way Snrub thinks!

Well I'm really unhappy with the new timetable.  Under the June-October version an express and a stopper were scheduled to arrive at Malvern at the same time at 9.20 and 9.33... but in reality of course there was always some variation so if you missed one you were almost certainly able to catch the other.  

The new timetable has (off the top of my had) stoppers at 9.16 and 9.28 and expresses at 9.20 and 9.33.  Whilst I initially thought this wouldn't be so bad what I have found is that all the overcrowding issues solved by the first timetable change have returned under the new timetable and it's particularly bad on the Siemens.  Whereas I could almost always (9/10 get a seat) I've not only not had a chance in hell of a seat I've been crushed into other standing passengers & barely got into the carriage.

Not only that, but whilst last week I was lauding Metro because we had a full week where almost every train arrived on time, yesterday was at least five minutes late and today we got to Flagstaff ten minutes late (9.56 instead of 9.46).  To add insult to injury they had already closed off one of the escalators and killed the speed so it was really slow getting up to William Street... AND my myki played up for the first time in forever.  

All in all  NOT a good commute today and I am VERY unimpressed with the effect the new timetable is having on my trip in to work.  The on time running should hopefully improve but it's the overcrowding I'm most annoyed about.  It must be coming from Caulfield.

Unfortunately with a 10 minute service between 8.45am and 4.15pm there is now even less margin for error A.G. and i don't expect things to get better for you, especially while the Siemens have their 30km/h speed restrictions and are used on the Frankston line where there are a lot of them in both directions.

Well I'm really unhappy with the new timetable.  Under the June-October version an express and a stopper were scheduled to arrive at Malvern at the same time at 9.20 and 9.33... but in reality of course there was always some variation so if you missed one you were almost certainly able to catch the other.

Hopefully the problems "Armadale/Malvern-gal" has are just teething issues?  From a quick look at the new timetables, there have been no changes at that time of the morning to the expresses from Malvern (from Cranbourne and Pakenham), and the intervals between the stopping trains from Frankston at that time of day have been reduced a little, so there doesn't seem to be any particular issue with the timetable that would cause increased crowding.  Of course, if the timetable is harder to achieve and there is more late running, that could be an issue.
Another interesting issue is the pattern between 1 pm and 3 pm when half the trains to Frankston don't go through the loop.  This means that the intervals for departures at FSS are uneven, and that the loop stations have a 20 minute frequency.   Perhaps announcements could be made at loop stations, when appropriate, that Frankston line passengers should take the next Cranbourne or Pakenham train to Richmond and change there (or for those going past Caulfield, to Caulfield, which would give more time to connect).  In an ideal world, this could be stated on the PIDs, but would that be asking too much?

I think the difference is that people who want to get in to the city by 10 used to have the option of 4 trains that would get you there pretty close to time.  
Anyone who arrived at the station at half past now only has the express rather than being able to split to the first of the express or the stopper.  There's now only stoppers at 9.16 (too early) and 9.28 (some people arrive after that) which drives the load onto the 9.33 express.  Hopefully once thigns settle down it will get less crowded but the difference last week to this week is huge.

[In short, the changes to the Frankston are affecting loading on the Cranbourne/Pakenham at Caulfield & Malvern, undoing all the previous improvements ]

North Melbourne - Moonee Ponds is another one. Only saving of time is skipping Ascot Vale as up until Newmarket the speed is 65kmh max. On the new timetable though, there only seems to be 5 in (which only one beholding the title of a true express), and a lone useless one out.

I think the point of the express running is that by Moonee Ponds the train is crush loaded (usually by Essendon passengers) so there is not point stopping the train down the line - you just end up losing more time as people try to squeeze aboard.