Why do the 458s have really poor-quality announcements?

SWRtrain_fan · 17 Jun 2019

Why do the 458 automated announcements sound as if they are lots of announcements put together? Is it because of the way they were merged /refurbished with the 460s in 2013? For example, "This is | Wokingham. | Please remember to take all your personal items with you when you leave the train."

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8J · 17 Jun 2019

The 458s have a very dated PIS system that works on wheel rotation as opposed to GPS. They are not reliable especially in leaf fall when wheels spin and trains go into a slide.

It is a completely different system to what is fitted to desiros and 455/456s and is as you say very jolty and doesn't sound professional.

JamesC357 · 17 Jun 2019

I’m not sure if this is exclusive to 458s or a quirk of SWR announcements but I’ve heard ‘This train is for London Waterloo, calling at and London Waterloo’ a few times which upsets the grammar pedant in me

Bletchleyite · 17 Jun 2019

I think it's been redone recently so isn't as, er, odd as it was. Originally the "This is X" had an oddly fake upwards intonation at the end of the station name, so it sounded like it had been given a fright. "This is Felthammmm!" Mind you, I'd have a fright if I accidentally ended up in Feltham.

applepie2100 · 17 Jun 2019

Could it be anything to do with them being built by Alstom during a period where their build quality might only be rivalled by that of British Leyland on a Friday afternoon?

Bletchleyite · 17 Jun 2019

applepie2100 said:
Could it be anything to do with them being built by Alstom during a period where their build quality might only be rivalled by that of British Leyland on a Friday afternoon?

Probably just more to do with the fact that they were the first post-privatisation new stock (I think - or was it the Chiltern 168s?) and as such the electronics were based on what you got in the 1990s and not what you get in 2019?

Starmill · 17 Jun 2019

Bletchleyite said:
I think it's been redone recently so isn't as, er, odd as it was. Originally the "This is X" had an oddly fake upwards intonation at the end of the station name, so it sounded like it had been given a fright. "This is Felthammmm!" Mind you, I'd have a fright if I accidentally ended up in Feltham.

Indeed. It also used to say 'the door buttons are now activated'... for some reason.

Ethano92 · 18 Jun 2019

I think there's a single shepperton diagram that uses a 458 which is a treat for the Kingston loop but not once have announcements or PIS worked when on board.

About the upwards intonation, I find it amusing when at vauxhall/Clapham junction and it says

"This train is for London Waterloo (upwards). The next station is London Waterloo (downwards)". I'd guess there are different recordings for when stations are being listed and when it's announcing what station the train is at but why would London Waterloo have too recordings in this case?

TRAX · 18 Jun 2019

Bletchleyite said:
Probably just more to do with the fact that they were the first post-privatisation new stock (I think - or was it the Chiltern 168s?) and as such the electronics were based on what you got in the 1990s and not what you get in 2019?

That would be it. Why people would expect a 1990s train to feature 2050s spaceship technology I have no idea...
At the time this sort of technology was revolutionary - talking trains !

43096 · 18 Jun 2019

Starmill said:
Indeed. It also used to say 'the door buttons are now activated'... for some reason.

Probably because when built they didn’t have door opening sounders. The announcement was retained after the sounders were fitted, though, and stayed until 458/5 conversion.

507 001 · 18 Jun 2019

The 175s have a similarly awful PIS.

SWRtrain_fan · 18 Jun 2019

JamesC357 said:
I’m not sure if this is exclusive to 458s or a quirk of SWR announcements but I’ve heard ‘This train is for London Waterloo, calling at and London Waterloo’ a few times which upsets the grammar pedant in me

That's probably only applicable to 458s

387gwr · 18 Jun 2019

Does anyone have a clip of the 458 announcements?

anamyd · 8 Jul 2019

507 001 said:
The 175s have a similarly awful PIS.

voiced by an Alison Foster / Ruth Mitchell mishmash since they moved to Wales & Borders!

Alison Foster: "We will shortly be arriving at..."
Ruth Mitchell: "Bridgend!"

Taunton · 8 Jul 2019

JamesC357 said:
I’m not sure if this is exclusive to 458s or a quirk of SWR announcements but I’ve heard ‘This train is for London Waterloo, calling at and London Waterloo’ a few times which upsets the grammar pedant in me

They have probably got this from the Waterloo PA announcements, which for the Kingston and Hounslow Roundabouts now announces them as calling at "Vauxhall, Clapham ........ Clapham, Vauxhall and London Waterloo".

I never noticed this previously so it seems to have just started.

700007 · 9 Jul 2019

Ethano92 said:
I think there's a single shepperton diagram that uses a 458 which is a treat for the Kingston loop but not once have announcements or PIS worked when on board.

About the upwards intonation, I find it amusing when at vauxhall/Clapham junction and it says

"This train is for London Waterloo (upwards). The next station is London Waterloo (downwards)". I'd guess there are different recordings for when stations are being listed and when it's announcing what station the train is at but why would London Waterloo have too recordings in this case?

I would imagine one recording is as if it is the end of a sentence, for example 'This train is for London Waterloo.' and the other upwards being a mid-sentence one to sound more natural, used in a context like 'This train is for London Waterloo via Richmond.'

anamyd said:
voiced by an Alison Foster / Ruth Mitchell mishmash since they moved to Wales & Borders!

Alison Foster: "We will shortly be arriving at..."
Ruth Mitchell: "Bridgend!"

Sounds like the weird mix you get on the Jubilee and Northern lines.

anamyd · 9 Jul 2019

700007 said:
Sounds like the weird mix you get on the Jubilee and Northern lines.

The Alison bits are just some of the original First North Western files reused

whhistle · 9 Jul 2019

anamyd said:
voiced by an Alison Foster / Ruth Mitchell mishmash since they moved to Wales & Borders!

Alison Foster: "We will shortly be arriving at..."
Ruth Mitchell: "Bridgend!"

Ha ha, that must be funny!

anamyd · 9 Jul 2019

whhistle said:
Ha ha, that must be funny!

it does amuse me

Goldfish62 · 10 Jul 2019

Rarely are the announcements correct on the morning peak up Reading services. Longcross, Putney and Vauxhall appear randomly in the announced stopping pattern.

This is the only stock on SWR where the driver rather than the guard activates the PIS as SWT specified them on the assumption of being DOO. Do the drivers have to guess the PIS codes? The randomness of the announcements suggests they do.

Goldfish62 · 10 Jul 2019

TRAX said:
That would be it. Why people would expect a 1990s train to feature 2050s spaceship technology I have no idea...
At the time this sort of technology was revolutionary - talking trains !

Yet c2c's Electrostars, ordered at the same time have a far superior GPS system.

K.o.R · 10 Jul 2019

700007 said:
I would imagine one recording is as if it is the end of a sentence, for example 'This train is for London Waterloo.' and the other upwards being a mid-sentence one to sound more natural, used in a context like 'This train is for London Waterloo via Richmond.'

Sounds like the weird mix you get on the Jubilee and Northern lines.

Interestingly the 377 announcements all use a falling intonation regardless of where in a sentence they are. They seem to have worded them so there is always a pause after a station name.

Bigfoot · 10 Jul 2019

Goldfish62 said:
Rarely are the announcements correct on the morning peak up Reading services. Longcross, Putney and Vauxhall appear randomly in the announced stopping pattern.

This is the only stock on SWR where the driver rather than the guard activates the PIS as SWT specified them on the assumption of being DOO. Do the drivers have to guess the PIS codes? The randomness of the announcements suggests they do.

The pis codes are on the drivers schedule card however they are mostly wrong and for a 5 car. Cue chaos.

Parallel · 10 Jul 2019

K.o.R said:
Interestingly the 377 announcements all use a falling intonation regardless of where in a sentence they are. They seem to have worded them so there is always a pause after a station name.

The Class 800s do this too.

The 458s sound a bit odd but I don’t find them that bad. Most other PIS problems on trains is just because the recordings haven’t been set up properly (like the 175s, 800s and also TfW’s TrainFX system where you get ‘We are now at Shrewsbury, This train is for... Birmingham InternatiONAL’

The annoying thing is TfW’s TrainFX system used the correct recordings previously, but someone’s been tampering with it within the last few months and now it sounds odd.

700007 · 10 Jul 2019

K.o.R said:
Interestingly the 377 announcements all use a falling intonation regardless of where in a sentence they are. They seem to have worded them so there is always a pause after a station name.

It seems to be the same on all Electrostar stock introduced around the turn of the millennium. The Southern 377s, Southeastern 375s and c2c 357s all have a very similar PIS screen and I even think they share certain recordings between the three of them.

Goldfish62 · 11 Jul 2019

Bigfoot said:
The pis codes are on the drivers schedule card however they are mostly wrong and for a 5 car. Cue chaos.

Thanks. I did wonder. Given that the issue has persisted for the past 20 years I doubt there'll be any solution now!

This morning Feltham was announced as Earley and this particular train didn't even call at Earley anyway.

macaronlover · 12 Jul 2019

387gwr said:
Does anyone have a clip of the 458 announcements?

Voila:

mightyena · 2 Aug 2019

Seems to be a SWT thing. The Desiros had some strange PIS formatting too

The PIS on the 450s (I assume the 444s were similar, I've not been on one up until SWR took over) always sounded like they'd forgotten what the space bar was for. Don't know if SWR fixed it, but they used to go something along the lines of:
"Welcome aboard this South West Trains service toWindsor & Eton Riverside, calling atVauxhallClapham JunctionPutneyRichmondTwickenhamWhittonFelthamAshfordStainesWraysburySunnymeadesDatchet andWindsor & Eton Riverside."
That and the 30 seconds or so of blank screen halfway through if there were lots of stops

The 458 one did make me laugh though. "This train is for|London Waterloo? The Next staion is|Richmond."

I'm not a fan of the 707 PIS either. Something about it just sounds slightly off to me. I think they've stolen all the pauses from the 450s

SWRtrain_fan · 5 Aug 2019

mightyena said:
I'm not a fan of the 707 PIS either. Something about it just sounds slightly off to me. I think they've stolen all the pauses from the 450s

I like the 707 information screens, they are real-time and very informative. But I don't like the Acapela Rachel voice much compared to Celia (the announcements on 158s, 159s, 444s, 450s, 455s and 458s)

Dan15812 · 5 Aug 2019

SWRtrain_fan said:
I like the 707 information screens, they are real-time and very informative. But I don't like the Acapela Rachel voice much compared to Celia (the announcements on 158s, 159s, 444s, 450s, 455s and 458s)

I would prefer for SWR to use Julie Berry on the desiro sets (444/450). And 707, 458, 455

And the GWR announcer (Janine Cooper Marshall) currently used on GWR trains.
For use on the SWR diesel fleet (158/159).

Why do the 458s have really poor-quality announcements?

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