Should it really be possible to see so many issues in a short time without even travelling on a train?

[Shrop]

Yesterday I dropped Mrs Shrop at Whitchurch to catch a train to see her daughter, and I returned there today to pick her up – here are my observations, it seems wrong to be able to find so much at fault.

• There is free parking at the station but the car park was almost completely full. A small red car was parked so far across a white parking bay line that it rendered the next space completely useless (this becomes more relevant later).
• She wanted a ticket for travel beyond Crewe, but thanks to the railways pricing policy it was cheaper to re-book at Crewe. So she bought a ticket to Crewe from the platform machine, and having completed that, she sought to book an onward ticket from there using the machine's facility to purchase a ticket originating at another station. Alas, the machine said no. It offered many originating stations, eg. Craven Arms and Cwmbran, but Crewe was not among them and couldn’t be obtained by any attempted selection of letters on the keyboard.
• When the train was being announced on the platform (3 times that we heard), each time it said this was the train for “Manchester Picc”. Okay, people who know about railways know that Picc means Piccadilly, but it’s potentially confusing for those who are less familiar.
• When picking her up today, the same red car was still straddling the space from yesterday morning. There are cameras for the car park, does this sort of thing never get any enforcement attention? There is enough pressure on this car park without losing spaces unnecessarily.
• While waiting for the late train today, the platform announcement came over numerous times starting to give a message, but then abruptly cut off.
• The last 3 or 4 announcements which were completed, said “The front two coaches are for Milford Haven, calling at Shrewsbury …” etc. This was a 5 coach train, but there was no indication at all about where the remaining 3 coaches were going to. A lady on the platform was sufficiently concerned that she asked me if only the first two coaches were going to Shrewsbury, so it wasn’t just me that thought the announcement was misleading.
• The announcements said the train would be calling at “Port Talbot Pway”, with the Pway being pronounced exactly as this looks. These points suggest that the computer generated announcements need some checking!

I don’t want to be too critical, but should it really be possible to notice quite so many issues in two short visits to a station? I don’t doubt for a moment that similar issues arise throughout the country, but is it so wrong to expect just a bit more attention to detail from our service providers?

 

[yorksrob]

Much as they get stick, Northern's ticket machines are good in that you can get tickets from alternative origin stations.

Shame they'll start giving out bog roll soon.

 

[Llanigraham]

Perhaps the cars in the car park were passengers who were already undertaking journeys.
Who runs the car park at Whitchurch station?
According to the NationalRail website there is no CCTV.