Station announcements too long

[Jamesrob637]

Any face covering announcements on open stations

Any face covering announcements full stop very soon!

 

[flitwickbeds]

In such case you should be able to read the route map to see if the SQ712 train actually stops at your desired destination, or if you can change to another train for your destination on route!

How on earth do you draw a simple route map which contains every single possible variation of a train departing and arriving into, say, Leeds or London Waterloo?

 

[nw1]

Hmm, you could cut down on the stations being listed by saying "calling at all stations between here and xx". It is reassuring to have the stations read out, however. The "change at" announcements are the same for every service, so could presumably be replaced with occasional announcements or posters of some sort explaining onward connections. Request stops could also be removed and announced on the train instead if time really is tight.

This has me wondering, what do they announce at Clapham Junction?

There was a phase, perhaps just one year (1988/9) when, if I remember right, the as-was Waterloo-Bournemouth stopper (93) was extended to Poole and I think even Wareham for one or two peak services. Furthermore, it still split at Woking for Alton that year. By that time, said services were stopping at Clapham Junction. Attempting to announce any Wareham terminators carrying an Alton portion would have been quite something, remembering that the service would at that time have called everywhere after Woking...

I do remember spending one day at Clapham in summer 1988. Can't remember the specific announcement but I do recall somewhere, may have been Clapham, seeing trains pull out before the announcement had finished.

Some of the announcements are definitely less concise these days. Always used to be of the form "please join the front 4 coaches only for London Road, Clandon and Horsley" (to take a concrete example I remember from back in the day). Now it would be "London Road, Clandon and Horsley have short platforms, the doors will not open, please ensure that you are in the front 4 coaches of the train if you wish to alight at those stations"...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Jun 2021 ==

There is no room for that sort of inconsistency in local services in a Takt. Close Bordesley or serve it properly, and all trains on a given route (e.g. "WM3", not necessarily everything passing through) should stop at Tyseley for consistency. The Merseyrail model is simple and well-understood - and does not require announcing all the stops!

While I'm broadly in agreement about easy-to-remember timetables and consistent calling patterns, there is the peaks to think about when you need to insert new services or maybe change calling patterns (e.g. provide further-out stations with a faster service than is available on the peak).

Could these peak services be given a different route number (e.g. the X3 rather than the 3, rather like on buses) to indicate they have a different calling pattern?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Jun 2021 ==

There is no room for that sort of inconsistency in local services in a Takt. Close Bordesley or serve it properly, and all trains on a given route (e.g. "WM3", not necessarily everything passing through) should stop at Tyseley for consistency. The Merseyrail model is simple and well-understood - and does not require announcing all the stops!

While I'm broadly in agreement about easy-to-remember timetables and consistent calling patterns, there is the peaks to think about when you need to insert new services or maybe change calling patterns (e.g. provide further-out stations with a faster service than is available off-peak)

Could these peak services be given a different route number (e.g. the X3 rather than the 3, rather like on buses) to indicate they have a different calling pattern?

I guess Southern headcodes were one approach to do this, with say the 81, 82, 83 on the Portsmouth Direct. However they weren't completely consistent, e.g. the 81 called at Godalming in the peaks but not off-peak; the 82 served Milford and Witley in school/college/work peaks but not otherwise. Maybe a wider range of headcodes could have provided consistency e.g.

81 will call at Woking, Guildford, Haslemere, Petersfield, Havant, Fratton, PSS, PH ONLY
82 as above but also Godalming
83 as above but also Clapham Junction, Farncombe, Liphook and Liss
84 as above but all stations beyond Guildford
85 Clapham, Wimbledon, Surbiton and all

It does somewhat preclude irregular skip-stopping patterns to maximise usage of the line though; as far back as I can remember the Portsmouth Direct for instance had some unusual stopping patterns at certain times in the peak, to squeeze more trains in.

 

[miklcct]

How on earth do you draw a simple route map which contains every single possible variation of a train departing and arriving into, say, Leeds or London Waterloo?

Just do what is doing in Stockholm:

 

[zwk500]

Just do what is doing in Stockholm:

Works well for all-stop metros, as is seen in the UK over many cities. However would work less well at, e.g. Barnes or Woking.

 

[flitwickbeds]

Just do what is doing in Stockholm:

Brilliant. Now do this for even a small provincial town like Bedford: You need to include in a full non-covid timetable:

• The LNwR Marston Vale:
  • All-stations to Bletchley
  • Peak-only limited stops to Bletchley
    
• The southbound Thameslink service:
  • Calling all stations to St Albans then straight to London*
  • Calling some stations (at least 2 different calling patterns) to St Albans then straight to London*
  • Calling all stations to St Albans then to London* calling at West Hampstead
  • Calling some stations to St Albans then to London* via West Hampstead
  • Calling all stations to St Albans then all stations to London*
  • Calling all stations to St Albans then some stations (differing) to London*
    
    *Then after London going to either Brighton, Three Bridges, Rainham, Gatwick Airport, or Sutton.
    
• The southbound EMT service:
  • Calling at Luton, Luton Airport Parkway and St Pancras
  • Calling only at St Pancras
    
• The northbound EMT service:
  • Calling all stations to Corby
  • Calling all stations to Melton Mowbray
  • Calling at a variety of stations to Nottingham
  • Calling at a variety of stations to Derby

...and these are just the trains that stop. You'd also need to add lines through Bedford for non-stopping services to/from Sheffield, Leeds, and Lincoln.

I make that a minimum of 25 map lines.

This is just one comparatively small town which has just one station. Trying to do this for, say, Leeds would be a mess. And you're advocating making a UK map showing every variation of train service at every station going to every other station, in a way which is easy for people to make sense of. IMO, you're living in dreamland.

 

[dm1]

The alternative is to have one or several "standard" stopping patterns, with any modifications being announced.

For example, the Metropolitan line does this. You have "all stations", "semi-fast" and "fast" services, with standard stopping patterns. For those fast trains that call at Wembley Park northbound in the evening peak, there's an announcement that says "This train calls at Wembley Park".

Then you have the other option of just announcing anywhere where a stopping pattern diverges. "This train will run without stopping until XXX", or "This train does not call at YYY, or "Change here for stations ZZZ, AAA and BBB". The idea being, anyone who knows where they're going will realise they're on the wrong train. Anyone unfamiliar will get told that the train isn't stopping where they're going, in time for them to get out and change if necessary.

Announcing every single stop a train stops at, every time it stops is absolute overkill and done almost nowhere else in the world to my knowledge. If you need noise-cancelling headphones to travel on a train in peace, then as the operator you're doing something wrong.

Then there are various accesibility apps that can reduce the number of announcements needed to the absolute minimum - for example the SBB has an app called "SBB Inclusive", that duplicates all platform describers at stations (with detection using GPS and beacons), as well as as any announcements or visual information on trains (using a Bluetooth beacon). It is designed to be fully compatible with screen readers and has various other features that make it as accessible as possible. Perhaps there's something similar in the UK, but I'm not aware of anything like this. It could however be something that GBR could set up relatively easily to generate a "quick win" as far as accesibility is concerned.


In other words, a Takt or a consistent set of stopping patterns does make life easier (in many cases for passengers generally, announcements and accessibility aside), but it is far from the only option to reduce auditory clutter in announcements.

 

[nw1]

The alternative is to have one or several "standard" stopping patterns, with any modifications being announced.

For example, the Metropolitan line does this. You have "all stations", "semi-fast" and "fast" services, with standard stopping patterns. For those fast trains that call at Wembley Park northbound in the evening peak, there's an announcement that says "This train calls at Wembley Park".

Reminds me of 80s announcements at Guildford for Portsmouth stopping trains, most of which omitted Hilsea, but a few peak ones made the stop. They read out the entire list of stops (except Hilsea) and then at the end added "This train also calls at Hilsea".

Presumably they didn't want to record another version with Hilsea included for the small number of trains that stopped there!

Though, referring back to the above, they could have even said simply "This is the 73 stopping train to Portsmouth and Southsea. This train also calls at Hilsea"

 

[mmh]

Milford Haven announcements (presuming they have them) must be pretty long for services to Manchester. You’ve got at least 30 stops in English, then repeated in Welsh

At least 30 stops in Welsh, then repeated in English, rather.

 

[Requeststop]

This thread takes me back to my childhood when I was 8 or 9 years old so 1961-62 onwards when on Summer Saturdays, I'd have a marvellous day watching all the tourists returning home on the summer specials from St Erth. The announcements of the stations to be called at and where to change for onward destinations fired up my imagination about places I'd not visit until adulthood, but it also helped me understand a large amount of the rail network at the time.
Of particular excitement to my young mind would be the list of destinations to get to by changing at Birmingham New Street, depending on whether the service was travelling to the North East or the North West, and if the service went from Bristol via Hereford and Shrewsbury, and the old Okehampton route. I had my British Railways Network map with which I'd try to follow the route of the trains and then the routes at each stop where you would have to change.

There was a man, I think his name was Pendarves, who made the announcements, and he had a very broad Cornish voice, which I think confused the intending passengers; there always seemed to be many asking what stations the trains were going to one the service had arrived.

A few years back there was the service from Penzance to Milford Haven - I'm wondering if that service had the most stops. There was also the Aberdeen-Penzance service (Again no longer) which had, I think, 49 stops?