Even more announcements on SWR

[DMckduck]

A rather manipulatively worded response, if you ask me. It was quite clear the post was not meant with malice. It's a very reasonable question to ask why so-called Quiet Carriages are still plagued with announcement spam.

Even so, of course they'd be allowed to sit in quiet carriages. But if they benefit from plenty of loud and clear auto-announcements, they'd likely be better off choosing to sit in one of the other carriages. It's their prerogative.

How would a blind person know they are boarding a coach that is or isnt the quiet carriage?

An announcement saying this is the quiet coach would surely annoy said people who don't want any in the quiet coach

 

[lookapigeon]

Oh for the simplicity of the New York Subway.

"Doors Closing. 34th Street Next".

This is what annoucements should be reduced to, the bare essentials. Anything above that is not service crucial (such as skipping stations or switching the destination) is unwanted noise, IMO.
That includes all annoucements about paying attention to the safety notices in the carriages, texting the BTP, taking your items with you etc. I realise guards have to stick to the script and no doubt get an ear bashing if they don't from their higher ups, however, I do feel as a paying commuter in a crammed short-formed sardine tin lacking modern facilities such as toilets, air conditioning and charging (in trains that about as old as I am) that someone is extracting the urine by asking me to check out the safety posters in a packaged carriage, along with the repetitive messages of penalty fares. Fare dodgers won't be put off by those.
Give us peace and bloody quiet, please.

 

[Farnborough]

... but then, we can't have people taking responsibility for their own safety, can we.

That's victim shaming.

I'm offended, and now demand compensation. [/s]

 

[Taunton]

Anything above that is not service crucial (such as skipping stations or switching the destination) is unwanted noise

It does spread to notices elsewhere. The train describers on the DLR show the next three trains. Someone decided a while ago that lines 2 and 3 could be hijacked for periodic messages. Of course, these have been gleefully taken by the Messages Mafia, to the extent that only this morning there was a whole string of them in succession and trains 2 and 3 were never shown. Lifts at the other end of the network, when travelling in the opposite direction, being out of order, because this apparently has to be shown on every platform on the network. Weekend works (don't worry, we all know by now the DLR is unusable at weekends). Take everything with you. All the rest

 

[superalbs]

I travelled yesterday on a CrossCountry train, on the same route as SWR. There were just two announcements given for each stop, manually: "Next stop in about 10 minutes time is X", and "Now approaching X, mind your step down".

No duplicated messages, no reminders about priority seats, advance tickets, "see it say it sorted", and "have a ticket or you will face prosecution". Also whilst being significantly quieter, yet still clearly audible.

It made for such a more relaxing journey. If it's good enough for CrossCountry, it's good enough for SWR. It does feel like there's someone at SWR trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

This is definitely one of the things I love about riding CrossCountry. I bet they will ruin that at the refurbishment.

 

[Bikeman78]

It does spread to notices elsewhere. The train describers on the DLR show the next three trains. Someone decided a while ago that lines 2 and 3 could be hijacked for periodic messages. Of course, these have been gleefully taken by the Messages Mafia, to the extent that only this morning there was a whole string of them in succession and trains 2 and 3 were never shown. Lifts at the other end of the network, when travelling in the opposite direction, being out of order, because this apparently has to be shown on every platform on the network. Weekend works (don't worry, we all know by now the DLR is unusable at weekends). Take everything with you. All the rest

There is nearly always at least one broken lift at Clapham Junction so that's another pointless announcement. It would be vaguely useful if it specified which platforms were affected. If using the lift were critical to my journey, I'd want to know long before I got to the station.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 May 2025 ==

How would a blind person know they are boarding a coach that is or isnt the quiet carriage?

An announcement saying this is the quiet coach would surely annoy said people who don't want any in the quiet coach

I think blind people are smarter than you give them credit for. I knew a blind couple in the 1980s. They travelled across London by tube and train to visit my granny. They also had a kid. When I think about the challenges of being a parent, I find that amazing. My kids would run rings around me if I couldn't see what they were up to.

 

[Cowley]

We’ve had quite a few threads on announcements recently and we feel that people have definitely had plenty of opportunities to have their say on the matter.

I think that’ll do us for now unless something unexpected comes up.

Thanks everyone