When did PA announcements start?

[route101]

I was wondering when PA announcements started, certainly seen footage in the 60s and hearing them.

 

[John Webb]

I was wondering when PA announcements started, certainly seen footage in the 60s and hearing them.

Announcements were made from the earliest days of the railways by the human voice. Electrical reinforcement came in with the Tannoy Company's formation in 1928, although, according to "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History" (Biddle and Simmons, OUP 1997), the railways were slow to adopt such systems until after WW2. BR's formation led to the widespread introduction of PA and the training of staff to use it correctly.

 

[Dr Hoo]

It was in some of the earliest railway rule books that a station’s name must be ‘called out’ for all arrivals by the station staff.

There is a popular story that the station master at Linlithgow on the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway in the 1840s had a pet parrot that could be relied upon to squawk “Linlithgow” - the world’s first (neurally) recorded announcement.

 

[StephenHunter]

Weren't the Blue Pullmans the first BR trains to have onboard PA systems from new?

 

[pdeaves]

I was wondering when PA announcements started, certainly seen footage in the 60s and hearing them.

On train or on station?

 

[route101]

On train or on station?

At stations I should have said, though I am interested on board too.

 

[hexagon789]

Certainly existed at large stations in the 1950s, in the British Transport Film Elizabethan Express, there are announcements heard at both London King's Cross (in purest RP, announcing the departure of the train) and at Edinburgh Waverley (in best posh Edinburgh, announcing its arrival).

In both cases the announcements are preceded by the delightfully old-fashioned sounding prefix of "Train Announcer Calling"!

 

[Tom B]

Certainly existed at large stations in the 1950s, in the British Transport Film Elizabethan Express, there are announcements heard at both London King's Cross (in purest RP, announcing the departure of the train) and at Edinburgh Waverley (in best posh Edinburgh, announcing its arrival).

In both cases the announcements are preceded by the delightfully old-fashioned sounding prefix of "Train Announcer Calling"!

Speaking of announcers, Doncaster must surely be one of very few left with an actual person in that job?

 

[hexagon789]

Speaking of announcers, Doncaster must surely be one of very few left with an actual person in that job?

As in announcements are normally manual as opposed to usually prerecorded but sometimes manual such as during disruption.

 

[Taunton]

Weren't the Blue Pullmans the first BR trains to have onboard PA systems from new?

I believe they were the first BR trains so fitted. Our family's one Blue Pullman trip, Paddington to Bristol, just used it for an arrival, which fascinated me. Don't know who did it, the guard or the Pullman Conductor. I suspect the latter.

Honourable mention has to go to CIE, who equipped the "Radio Train" in 1950, which ran summer excursions from Dublin to Killarney etc. It didn't actually use radio, but had a studio in one coach from which an announcer described the journey, played music from a record player, and even interviewed train passengers.

On stations it came along at some principal points in the 1930s, I believe Paddington was first on the GWR. Equipment by the Tannoy company, who later were the market leaders, and for whom the classic horn-shaped speakers mounted high were a trademark. The classic French comedy film "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday", 1953, opens with a witty parody of inaudible station announcements, so the SNCF must have followed the developments as well.

 

[route101]

Speaking of announcers, Doncaster must surely be one of very few left with an actual person in that job?

I noticed at Manchester Piccadilly they were doing some manual announcements.

 

[InkyScrolls]

At Lancaster many of the announcements are still manual, possibly because virtually everything is running late by the time it gets there.

 

[Western Lord]

Certainly existed at large stations in the 1950s, in the British Transport Film Elizabethan Express, there are announcements heard at both London King's Cross (in purest RP, announcing the departure of the train) and at Edinburgh Waverley (in best posh Edinburgh, announcing its arrival).

In both cases the announcements are preceded by the delightfully old-fashioned sounding prefix of "Train Announcer Calling"!

I would imagine that most BTF productions were filmed mute with sound effects added afterwards, so the announcers may have been actors in a studio.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

After the Blue Pullmans, I think MK2 stock was the first to get PA facilities, on the newly electrified WCML.
It was the start of the useless default "Don't forget to take all your personal belongings with you when leaving the train" era.
And also the start of "the next station stop is...".
Today we have progressed all the way to "See it, say it, sorted".

I always hated the BR Southern practice of playing opposing automatic announcements at large stations like East Croydon.
There's nothing worse than trying to decode a stopping pattern while the same voice is booming out something different on the opposite platform.
You can have too much information.

 

[InkyScrolls]

After the Blue Pullmans, I think MK2 stock was the first to get PA facilities, on the newly electrified WCML.
It was the start of the useless default "Don't forget to take all your personal belongings with you when leaving the train" era.
And also the start of "the next station stop is...".
Today we have progressed all the way to "See it, say it, sorted".

I always hated the BR Southern practice of playing opposing automatic announcements at large stations like East Croydon.
There's nothing worse than trying to decode a stopping pattern while the same voice is booming out something different on the opposite platform.
You can have too much information.

The amount of useless and irritating announcements these days has become rather silly, but unfortunately I doubt that's going to change.

 

[Devonian]

Electrical reinforcement came in with the Tannoy Company's formation in 1928, although, according to "The Oxford Companion to British Railway History" (Biddle and Simmons, OUP 1997), the railways were slow to adopt such systems until after WW2

PA announcements don't feature in Noel Coward's play 'Still Life' (1936), set in the '30s at a home counties junction station and in which the trains are indicated by bells only. They must have become common enough within a few years to have supplemented the bells in the film version 'Brief Encounter' (1945 - but still set in the '30s - voiced by Noel Coward himself).

 

[ChiefPlanner]

That splendid film "A Run for your Money" (1949) shows the inner office ("PA") at Paddington to good effect and the results of some hilarious error in announcements to an arriving up South Wales night train with large numbers of rugby fans.

 

[yorksrob]

I wonder if there are any stations left with the round loudspeaker with the little canopy over it. Used to be plenty on the Southern, but haven't seen one for a while.

 

[_toommm_]

As in announcements are normally manual as opposed to usually prerecorded but sometimes manual such as during disruption.

Feel free anyone to correct me, but I’ve never heard automated announcements at Doncaster. Certainly it’s rare for trains to pass platforms without stopping as the fast services use the UFL and DFL between platforms three and four, and a lot of freight booked to pass on like 2WG near West Yard. That leaves just announcements for departures.

 

[etr221]

Honourable mention has to go to CIE, who equipped the "Radio Train" in 1950, which ran summer excursions from Dublin to Killarney etc. It didn't actually use radio, but had a studio in one coach from which an announcer described the journey, played music from a record player, and even interviewed train passengers.

Did not BR run 'Radio Trains' at some point in the 1950s-early 1960s? I seem to recall reading about them in North Wales and Scotland.

 

[Taunton]

Did not BR run 'Radio Trains' at some point in the 1950s-early 1960s? I seem to recall reading about them in North Wales and Scotland.

Not aware. The 1950 installation was a typically bulky, valve-driven arrangement, permanently installed in one coach, I don't believe BR did such at the time. Much later on there was a commentator with microphone in an observation car (actually an old Met-Cam dmu driving trailer) on the Kyle line; it appears in Michael Palin's well known TV programme which travelled the line.

The extent of the 1950s CIE installation can be seen here on the cover of the train's brochure:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/4570100257

The two "random passengers" being interviewed appear to have been sent to a professional make-up and hairdresser artist before the photo was taken!

 

[eldomtom2]

Honourable mention has to go to CIE, who equipped the "Radio Train" in 1950, which ran summer excursions from Dublin to Killarney etc. It didn't actually use radio, but had a studio in one coach from which an announcer described the journey, played music from a record player, and even interviewed train passengers.

Didn't the LNER do something similar in the 1930s?

 

[route101]

Newcastle, Carlisle and York only gained automated announcements in the last few years.

 

[Ken H]

Station announcements were always a thing for me. But for me on train announcements came with Mk2 carriages. Not sure the early ones were fitted or we had to wait for the air con ones. There was nothing on modernisation plan DMU's.
Did the XP64 coaches have PA. would they have been the first?

 

[StephenHunter]

Not aware. The 1950 installation was a typically bulky, valve-driven arrangement, permanently installed in one coach, I don't believe BR did such at the time. Much later on there was a commentator with microphone in an observation car (actually an old Met-Cam dmu driving trailer) on the Kyle line; it appears in Michael Palin's well known TV programme which travelled the line.

The extent of the 1950s CIE installation can be seen here on the cover of the train's brochure:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/4570100257

The two "random passengers" being interviewed appear to have been sent to a professional make-up and hairdresser artist before the photo was taken!

Didn't East Germany do something similar on some of their trains?

 

[Ash Bridge]

Station announcements were always a thing for me. But for me on train announcements came with Mk2 carriages. Not sure the early ones were fitted or we had to wait for the air con ones. There was nothing on modernisation plan DMU's.
Did the XP64 coaches have PA. would they have been the first?

Not sure that they were fitted with PA from new, though probably retro fitted at some point during the early 70s. I think as someone mentioned up thread this honour goes to the Met Cam Blue Pullman sets certainly as far as BR is concerned; although the Met Cam mk1 loco hauled Pullman stock built for the ER during 1962 had the wiring in place from new but the speakers were not fitted until several years later, it is of course possible that some of the experimental Mk1 pattern coaches supplied to BR from private manufacturers during the late 1950s were also fitted but these were only one-off vehicles.

 

[Taunton]

How were the connections between carriages for the PA done initially?

 

[satisnek]

I can remember a letter in an old copy of Wireless World which the school library had, and thanks to the magic of the internet, it can be found here (it's the January 1980 edition).

On page 98 of the October issue "Mixer " says:
"...it must surely be possible to design something that is at least intelligible." Of course it is!
Soon after the war British Railways installed at Liverpool Street, Charing Cross , London Bridge, and probably other stations, public address schemes that worked really well. The design and installation work was, if I remember correctly, by Rediffusion Limited. The essence of the scheme was that it employed many low output loudspeakers close overhead, instead of the few high power horns that had been used before . Another feature of the Rediffusion design was that it included a form of a.g.c. which boosted the output when locomotives (steam in those days) were puffing hard or blowing off.
The important point is that the Rediffusion job worked well. Then, perhaps 10 or 12 years ago, although the installed equipment was, so far as I could tell, still working well, it was ripped out and replaced by something else. Although this "something else" still uses a multitude of small speakers it has never been properly intelligible since the day it was commissioned.
C. H. Starr
London SE14

I wonder if there are any stations left with the round loudspeaker with the little canopy over it. Used to be plenty on the Southern, but haven't seen one for a while.

Leamington Spa last time I looked (probably earlier this year). I've been looking out for any of these for sale for many years, but they don't seem to be considered 'railwayana'. They were preceded by a design which looked like a double-sided searchlight signal; a few of these lasted into this century at Sheffield.

 

[yorksrob]

I can remember a letter in an old copy of Wireless World which the school library had, and thanks to the magic of the internet, it can be found here (it's the January 1980 edition).



Leamington Spa last time I looked (probably earlier this year). I've been looking out for any of these for sale for many years, but they don't seem to be considered 'railwayana'. They were preceded by a design which looked like a double-sided searchlight signal; a few of these lasted into this century at Sheffield.

I'm glad there are still some around !

The double sided searchlight type might be what I'm thinking of.

 

[DanNCL]

Newcastle, Carlisle and York only gained automated announcements in the last few years.

Carlisle has had automated announcements for many years, but it's only in the last 4-5 years they've actually been used regularly, prior to that you'd occasionally hear the auto announcer but it was more common to hear a manual announcement.

The manual announcers still make the odd announcement at Newcastle, and there was a period a few months ago where the auto announcer was switched off there.

All LNER managed stations have the ability to use the auto announcer, but only York and Newcastle acutally use it.