When driving services it often happens I am told to lock the doors after which I am told to wait for a specific time. This means I have to wait with doors locked which never ever happens in real life. Shouldn't this be the other way around? Shouldn't you FIRST see the time for which you have to wait and only when it is almost time the Lock doors message should appear? Now I never really now if I have to wait or not until I locked the doors already. Feels odd.
I think I did notice in a scenario that after the passengers had loaded the spot that usually says Lock doors actually showed Wait until! So this is possible already in TWS but not yet in services. Seems like an easy thing to get this feature working like that in services?
I think the same could be said for longer stops like at Paddington or Reading. It makes 0 sense that upon arriving, you are told to open the doors, then close them a minute later-and that ends the service. The train may spend 30 minutes there but the doors will be closed the whole time. Any service at the final stop should really complete upon opening the doors, and the first instruction of the service that follows should not be to just 'drive to next station' but should be to close the doors once it is departure time.
In the meantime I came up with the most simple solution for my little problem. It is so simple that I am almost embarrassed about it. The thing is: the departure time ALWAYS is the due/arrival time plus one minute. So look at the time you should arrive and you already know the time you should leave again. Which this knowledge I just did a service and whenever I got the order to Lock the doors and I knew it was too early I simply didn't lock the doors: I waited until some 15 to 10 seconds BEFORE what I knew would be the departure time and only then I locked the doors. After that I only saw the WAIT info for a few seconds. Works like a charm. Everytime. And feels a lot more realistic. Obviously I still would like to see this changed but this does work.
