Train Station

Porters, signalmen, guards, cleaners.....

On Tuesday I shall be passing through and stopping at a lot of stations where trains may stop if they want to, or pass through. I will catch board a train at Bristol ? station and unboard it at Edinburgh.

I think we have changed the identity of a station from a 'place on the railway' to a 'place where trains stop'

Surely the identity of a railway (or train) station has always been a place where trains stop. A place on the railway could be all sorts of other things, e.g. a cutting, level crossing, points, junction.

About sixty five years ago my husband did fall down the gap. An announcement wouldn't have helped him because, as his mother said, he was always where he shouldn't be.

I thought 'railroad' was American - as in
'I've been working on the railroad'

AlieOxon Railroad was the original term, but was quickly superseded by railway in Britain. In America, railroad, just like gotten, continues to be used.

Ah!

DD1 travelled to school by train with her 'cello. I used to get a phone call from the Station Master: (broad Fife accent) 'Mrs.C, yer Hannah's left her thingie on the platform agin' so off I would go to fetch it - any excuse to get out of cello lessons. On the subject of gaps between the platform and the train - ours is huge - probably a good 14" as the station is on a slight bend, very dangerous in fact. The girls used to lose their shoes down the gap regularly, so Andrew would have to fish them out with a long pole. An elderly lady did actually slip down the gap and injured her leg quite badly, luckily she was stopped from falling the whole way by her companion

Trollope's finest work (i believe) was about getting people to invest in a railroad in the US. (The Way we Live Now)
It always intrigues me to see the way it is called the "iron road" in most languages - spainish, french, irish etc

That reminded me:
SONG OF THE IRON ROAD
(Ewan MacColl)..................any one heard this one? I have it on an old 10" LP I got in the 60s, but I don't have a date for the song.

And another one about the train - very funny and very early, I hadn't realised how early!
mysongbook.de/msb/songs/i/ironhors.html

I agree FlicketyB - I do think the pomposity of 'management speak' being introduced to over complicate stuff has a lot to answer for.

It's a very useful way of flogging the emperor some new clothes too - or the same clothes with a shiny new badge!

Love the "customers" point absentgrana - I wonder when they will become "service users" like NHS patients!

And, don't forget to take your personal belongings with you when descending to the surface of the platform - or is that 'train passenger filtering channel' !!!

I hate "arriving into" as well. It's completely wrong also. I think the thing is that people making the announcements just don't know it's wrong!

I was on a west coast train a year or two back now, and I seem to remember the speaker over the tannoy (there's a good word you don't hear about much these days!) said something like, disabled railcards weren't valid for tickets/travel on this train.

Probably not, but there's just something about it in the back of my mind.

That said, I was on a train from Euston about a year or so back, when the announcement was made that certain tickets were not valid on this train - the announcement was made about 30 seconds or less before the train was due to depart.

What transpired next was like watching lemmings leaping off cliff.

At least, I was sure that whether my ticket was valid or not, I wouldn't be kicked off until Warrington.

I did have a standard class ticket, and I was in standard class - unlike some!

Haha - I'd forgotten "Train Manager" - brilliant invention

I was on a train when it was announced that the seats were now first come first served. There were a number of people who had booked seats; one girl, a foreign student I believe just kept saying over and over again that she'd booked a seat. I felt ashamed of how shambolic it all was. We used to travel to Cheltenham by train for the races, but got sick of paying a lot for a ticket and having to stand all the way back. We now go by car.

@JessM : "Trollope's finest work (i believe) was about getting people to invest in a railroad in the US. (The Way we Live Now)"

A railroad that was never going to be built... It is a great book - on the same lines (ha!) as Dickens and his Mr Merdle, in Little Dorit -- in fact both were based on the same real-life Irish banker, who ended up committing suicide on Hampstead Heath...

"It always intrigues me to see the way it is called the "iron road" in most languages - spainish, french, irish etc" - German, too, 'der Eisenbahn'.

Yes the main character in the book reminded me so much of Maxwell. The way we live now, too.
Good BBC adaptation.
Made a name for Shirley Henderson.

"Die Eisenbahn" feetle (pedants' alert)

I first heard the term in the US. I'm afraid I tend to use it now as opposed to bus station. It makes it clearer for our foreign visitors I think.

Three syllables instead of four too. More efficient [little devil]

When was the last time caught a railway to London
Or Edinburgh or anywhere? No you catch a train don't you ?

Why do we say 'catch'? Is it anything to do with camels and deserts and things?

I make no apologies for my first plagiarism from these wonderful words of wisdom:
10) A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk, I have a work station.

Very nice, gracesmum!