A question for the British TSW fans. The train lengths for WSR have been increased from five to seven coaches. But now at least in Stogumber and Williton the trains are too long to fit along the platforms. Is this a natural situation? Dutch railways would never allow such an unsafe situation. I assume these long trains should simply skip these stops. It bothers me somehow and I am not happy with this change. Maybe I just should uncouple them before departing ...
It's not unknown. In such instances the train will stop with the rear or front coaches overhanging the platform and passengers for those stations will be advised to sit near the front or rear of as appropriate. There's a halt in Scotland with a platform that's shorter than a single coach length!
I don't know how they do it in Europe but in the States they will just unlock the doors only on the cars that are on the platforms, and you would have to walk to the car that's on a platform in order to exit the train. Although they usually group you by train car depending on where you are heading. in WSR - I just stop so the front cars are at the platforms and the rear cars are not.
It isn't unusual. The smaller stations on preserved lines, which are generally old branch lines often wouldn't have needed to accommodate seven coaches (especially mark 1 coaches which were longer than most pre-BR coaches) so would have had shorter platforms. The five coaches on the original release wasn't really realistic as the WSR like a lot of more popular preserved railways often run 6, 7 or even 8 carriage trains.
That seems like a silly change given that there is no way independently open only the doors that are actually at the platform. I would have expected them to make this change before changing train lengths. (Guess I have to run around shutting doors before people fall out...)
Thank you all for your comments... Would be nice if only the doors at the platform would open, but for WSR I guess the doors are not locked anyway. As far as I know, you need to open the window first and then you can open the door from the outside. At leats you can see then that there is no platform.