please empty your brain below

I fear this dumbing down may be due to the fact that the eastern area train service is now run by a coach service operator. Something to do with the comparative traditional clientele...

Nothing like a bit of annoying stereotyping for a Saturday morning is there?

National Express have had the East Anglia franchise since 2004, and have been running trains since privatisation. If you ever took a 'one', WAGN, c2c, Midland Mainline, Silverlink, Central Trains, Gatwick Express, etc train, National Express were running it.

Or do naughty people try sneaking through the ticket barrier by saying "oh sorry, I had my ticket checked on the train so I though I'd leave it there"? I think not.

Yes they do.

THe warning about leaving items on the train may be the result of all those secret government papers being left on trains.

Count yourself lucky you got a real person, as opposed to a disembodied computer that would also announce that it was personally sorry for the delay to your journey

The thing that annoys me about the "Please use all available carriage exits..." is that it's not possible for any of us to use more than one exit at a time so the announcement seems to assume some sort of hive mentality. See also "use both lanes" sings on roads, though there it is possible to hog both lanes which is not, I suspect, what they want.

As bad - or worse - on the tube, as you will know. Four competing sound-streams at Canary Wharf the other morning, none of them listened to (you couldn't if you tried) and only one of any informational value (a call to one of the staff).

I was on the District Line the other week and the station announcements on the train were all completely wrong. No one seemed in the least concerned - amazing really as normally there's a crowd of people who don't know the system and can't tell the difference between the District, Circle and Hammersmith trains. Unfortunately the driver put the thing right before we entered zone 1 - I was really looking forward to that bit of the journey!

When they say 'please make sure you have all your personal possessions with you when you leave the train' (as they do on Southern)the correct response is to look mildly panicked and say 'Oh no! I've left most of mine at home.'

First Great Western insist on the tautologous "station stop" as in "Our next station stop is Swindon". Presumably in case I thought they were going to tell me about stations we were passing through but not stopping at.

First Capital Connect have produced an entire leaflet about how to get on and off their trains safely.

'Station stop' is so that you don't try to get off when they stop somewhere other than a station. Because I'm sure people used to do that all the time, even when you were allowed to open the doors for yourself.

Here in the States, we don't need to have our tickets checked upon exit, so I appreciate the reminder when I'm in the UK. Otherwise, I'm apt to treat it like an airlines boarding pass stub and use it for a bookmark or leave it in the seat pocket.

At most of the stations on this route, nobody checks your ticket on the way out anyway.

I notice that many trains now have electronic displays to show such information visually. The advantage of these is that they're much easier to ignore. Therefore, I think that they should only put essential information out over the Tannoy system (such as the next station and any interchanges), and anything extra (such as "please take all your luggage with you") should be shown on the displays.

Surely that's not too much to ask?

@Andrewh like this? .........please..... remember......to...take.. your...guide......dog...with......you....
.....

Yes, but what about passengers who are both deaf and blind? How long before train announcements have to be inclusive for them too?

The London-Norwich route is one of the last in the country where passengers have to remember to shut the door behind them. Delays caused by passengers not shutting doors are small, but they add up - it's a big problem.

National Express care enough about running trains that in the mid-90s they stopped running coach services within Scotland entirely, so they could run trains there instead.

'Tisn't just Eastern Region. Network Southeast & Southern Trains have similar repetive automated announcements.

Travelled by First Great Western recently. Only announcements were when the guard told us we were approaching 'insert name'. The joy. & FGW are run by a bus company.

Almost all train companies are run by bus companies: Arriva (Wales, CrossCountry), National Express (c2c, East Anglia & East Coast), Stagecoach (South West Trains, East Midlands and 49\\% of Virgin), First Group (Gt Western, Scotrail, Thameslink/FCC), GoVia [Go-Ahead buses] (Southern, South Eastern and London Midland). Only 'proper' TOCs not run by buscos are Merseyrail, Northern (Serco and Nedrail i.e. Dutch railways) Chiltern and London Overground (Deutsche Bahn in varying proportions).

Not forgetting the defunct TOCs or those that used to be run by another busco:
NX had (at one time or another) Wales & West, Wales & Borders, Wessex Trains, Valley Lines, Midland Main Line, Gatwick Express, Silverlink, Scotrail, WAGN and Central Trains.
First had Great Eastern and North Western, and, briefly, Anglia.
Govia had Thameslink.
Arriva had Arriva Trains Northern (actually North Eastern)
Connex (infamously) had SouthCentral and SouthEastern
MTL had Merseyrail.

And one current TOC I forgot:
First have TransPennine.

Re: Bronchitikat. Network SouthEast hasn't risen from the grave has it?











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