Remember an american couple boarding a manchester service asking me how they could get to liverpool street. I confirmed with them they meant liverpool lime street (which would explain the need to be on a manchester bound service at Reading) and directed them to the connection at stafford only for the TM to find out they trally wanted london liverpool street!
A relative of mine recently accompanied two friends from the USA, throughout a holiday they took in England, including London. Although this matter was, in this case, only theoretical: she recounted how one of these American ladies seemed totally unable to get her head round the fact that rail-travel-wise, Liverpool Street Station in London, has effectively nothing to do with Liverpool on Merseyside.
Similar to that I've seen posts on here before that EMT services at Norwich are advertised as going to "Lime Street. Liverpool" rather than the usual "Liverpool Lime Street" so people don't misread the departure display as "Liverpool Street"
When I lived in Cambridge there would often be departures listed for
Kings Lynn
Kings Cross
Liverpool Street
Liverpool Lime Street
For a visitor, it's far from obvious which is the London train!
and
Hadders writes: "Quite common for passengers at Cambridge to get their Cross and Lynn mixed up! Even more amusing when the Cambridge Cruiser arrives with the front 4 cars continuing to Lynn and the rear 4 returning to Cross. Cue much confusion."
It can cross one's mind occasionally, to wonder whether the old railway companies might in some cases have done well to anticipate future confusion for passengers; and thus name their London termini differently. However, that would have required considerable crystal-ball-ownership -- and it's probably futile to do much to try to counter people's absolutely infinite capacity for getting things wrong.
The only time I've had confusion at a ticket office was when the guy couldn't seem to hear the difference between Hamworthy and Tamworth.
and
jcollins writes: "I once asked for a ticket to Burley Park (Leeds) at a North West ticket office and the ticket office man said 'Did you say Burnley Park? I've not heard of that one.' "
Prompting a brief excursion "off the rails": I recall that in one of the IMO splendid "Flashman" novels by George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman is in the USA in 1849, on the Mississippi River, engaged in something which is considered "dodgy" at that time and place. He tries in great haste, to buy a steamboat ticket to escape his pursuers; suffers an exasperating conversation with a hard-of-hearing and elderly steamboat booking clerk. There's a misunderstanding about two similar-sounding, and to a British visitor, unfamiliar cities -- St. Louis, and Louisville. Flashy thinks that he's bound for one, but arrives at the other, where he definitely does not want to be -- mayhem ensues for our anti-hero.
