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passenger confusion over trains going to similar sounding destinations

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duncanp

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Have yet had the three stations in Worcester: Foregate St., Shrub Hill and Park...?!!
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Worcester Park station is actually in London, which goes to prove the point of this thread.

I don't know if anyone has mistaken Derby Road (near Ipswich) for Derby.

Or

Johnston (Pembrokshire) for Johnstone (Scotland)

Or Bradford On Avon (Wiltshire) for any of the stations in Bradford (West Yorkshire)
 
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sprunt

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This thread reminds me that I once bought a ticket to Lowdham, which was shown on the tickets as Lowdham (Notts). Was there previously another Lowdham station somewhere?
 
Skimpot flyer

Skimpot flyer

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How about London Road (Brighton) and London Road (Guildford) ? You can even buy a ticket between those two that is ’Route: Not London’ I believe
 
61653 HTAFC

61653 HTAFC

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duncanp said:
Or Bradford On Avon (Wiltshire) for any of the stations in Bradford (West Yorkshire)
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There's also Bradford on Tone between Taunton and Wellington... it never had a station but does have a railway, and gives its name to a level crossing on the GWML. The first "d" in the Yorkshire city of Bradford is usually pronounced as a "t" by us tykes though!
 
Train Maniac

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Its always good fun listening to the guard doing the announcements for the Ashford International to Canterbury West train. There is a 50/50 chance they will mix up Chilham and Chartham (the correct order) with each other :lol:
 
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Antman

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On a similar theme I overheard a lady saying that she had wrongly thought Liverpool Street Station was closed over the weekend for engineering work, it was of course Liverpool Lime Street that was closed except for Merseyrail. Obviously not the first time those stations have caused confusion.
 
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Merle Haggard

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I don't think this possibility has already been mentioned up thread, but if so, I apologise.
Many junior clerks working at BR London HQs were recruited from booking offices in the provinces. In those circumstances I was exchanging anecdotes from a previous life with a colleague who had been a Manchester district relief booking clerk, and he told me this story. One of the stations he had covered on Sundays had been Castleton, which is, as I am sure most will know, near Rochdale.
There is also station which was then called 'Hope for Castleton'; it's an ideal place to visit on a Sunday to get away from Manchester into the countryside, not too far on the train.
Can you see where this story goes? Why go to Hope and then have to get to Castleton, when there was a train that went straight there?
He became quite used to people dressed for a long stiff walk alighting from the train, looking around at the industrial landscape in a slightly puzzled way before asking, "Err, which way's Edale?"
 
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SteveM70

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Perhaps not quite what this thread is about, but plenty of people get confused at Manchester Victoria when two trains depart for Blackburn in the space of a few minutes; one via Bolton and the other via Todmorden. Throw in the normal late running and a game of musical platforms, and platform staff just shouting the final destination when the train eventually arrives, and hey presto a fair few people end up heading in the wrong direction
 
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Merle Haggard

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SteveM70 said:
Perhaps not quite what this thread is about, but plenty of people get confused at Manchester Victoria when two trains depart for Blackburn in the space of a few minutes; one via Bolton and the other via Todmorden. Throw in the normal late running and a game of musical platforms, and platform staff just shouting the final destination when the train eventually arrives, and hey presto a fair few people end up heading in the wrong direction
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At the other end, they're confusing, too. Route bashing from Blackburn I encountered trains for Southport heading East and trains for Rochdale facing West before turning South. Just when you thought you had a good geographical knowledge of the North-West...
 
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billio

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SteveM70 said:
Perhaps not quite what this thread is about, but plenty of people get confused at Manchester Victoria when two trains depart for Blackburn in the space of a few minutes; one via Bolton and the other via Todmorden. Throw in the normal late running and a game of musical platforms, and platform staff just shouting the final destination when the train eventually arrives, and hey presto a fair few people end up heading in the wrong direction
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At York the problem of passengers boarding slow trains to Leeds via Harrogate (instead of via Church Fenton) is addressed by showing the destination of the Harrogate trains as a station near Leeds, not Leeds itself. Presumably at Victoria trains via Todmorden could be shown as terminating at Burnley or some other suitable station.
 
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JKF

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On the related subject of dozy passengers, I was once on a ferry about to depart from Holyhead that had to put the ramp back down so an American passenger could get off having mistakenly thought they had boarded the train to London. I know trains are a bit bigger across the pond and most people there don’t have the experience of catching one, but still...

(In fairness I seem to recall boarding the ferry as a foot passenger involved lots of enclosed walkways and it’s possible they’d thought they had entered some sort of station structure rather than an enormous boat).
 
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BanburyBlue

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I do remember once at Oxford station, where 2 tourists got off and asked the GWR station guy for directions to Oxford Circus.
 
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SteveM70

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billio said:
At York the problem of passengers boarding slow trains to Leeds via Harrogate (instead of via Church Fenton) is addressed by showing the destination of the Harrogate trains as a station near Leeds, not Leeds itself. Presumably at Victoria trains via Todmorden could be shown as terminating at Burnley or some other suitable station.
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Yes, but the travel time to Blackburn via both routes isn’t that different, unlike the York to Leeds example, so a customer going to Blackburn could reasonably use either train
 
Skimpot flyer

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BanburyBlue said:
I do remember once at Oxford station, where 2 tourists got off and asked the GWR station guy for directions to Oxford Circus.
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Ha! Reminds me of a little boy on the Victoria Line with his parents. His dad said ‘we have to get off at Oxford Circus’, to which the boy asked excitedly ‘will there be clowns and lions?’ ...
 
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