Station Name-boards

[LYRobert]

How did passengers know which station they were at, during WW2? Did platform staff shout out the station name when the train stopped?

Throughout the country, all the sign-posts, town name-boards, and such-like were removed during the war to pevent them from helping an invasionary force. I remember asking my dad what this black-and-white pole was for at the end of our lane, and he said it was a sign post. As a war-time child I thought it very odd that people needed to fasten labels on streets!

Even more wierd to my five-year-old mind were street lights. I asked about the lamp-posts as well, and when it was explained I said "Everybody knows you don't have lights on outside in the night". I know it's true because it was often quoted by my Dad when the war was over. The street-light in the lane (gas) was re-furbished and re-commisioned in 1946 much to my astonishment.

 

[Pigeon]

With practice, and assuming you're already looking, you can develop the skill of locating the board and fixing your eyes on it as you pass. You'll find you can then successfully read it

And of course you can practice by freezing the relative motion of the sleepers on the adjacent track.

It does help though for the board to be reasonably conspicuous so you can pick out the thing you're going to freeze in time to successfully do it. So a uniform design in an overall light colour, and set on its own, not all hemmed round with advertising crap so it looks from a distance like something you don't want to see.

That was something BR did particularly well - standardising on a reasonably-sized white board with clear black lettering in an easily-read typeface. I decry the post-BR practice of replacing those signs with some arbitrary combination of colours and typeface which is invariably significantly less effective at its actual purpose, for no reason at all beyond some irrational obsession with changing anything BR did. A black sign with thin white lettering is much harder to pick out of all the clutter and harder to read when you have found it. Good thing I know what all the stations round here look like without needing the signs

 

[weepingwillowb]