-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Anne station Announcements
- Thread starter TrainTube
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
E_Reeves
Established Member
It was a station announcer. They did a live demo tooEh?Could have been Sara Cox?
northernbelle
Member
- Joined
- 10 Oct 2018
- Messages
- 680
I agree - it's nice to have a different voice to the usual Julie Berry or Celia/Phil fayre.
The male voice is David Sheppard - a BBC broadcaster from the South West.
I think he has got a really good broadcasting voice, Wikipedia seems to think he also likes his transport too.
There must have been longstanding instructions to pronounce it that way, as manual announcements at Reading 20 years ago used to do exactly the same.
gimmea50anyday
Established Member
TPE used to use an in house voice in Rod (Radnall) on stations but has now been replaced by ATOC Annie. On board K,ath (nicknamed RoboKat) is now being replaced by BBC Humberside's Neil Rudd
Rob always used to have a tendency to announce everything at a very high speed!
Sam
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Thank goodness for the latter, I've never known such a rude and clipped sounding autoannouncer as the original Class 185 one. There are so many nice, friendly sounding Northern voices out there that having gone for one like that made the mind boggle.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
A bit like the one used by SWT/SWR on board, which has very short gaps between words and so sounds like it is in a massive hurry?
Ha ha! Just did a cheeky google and found this forum. That "toilets" announcement seems to come out of nowhere! No bing bongs or anything. Usually amusingly when there's been a long gap and no other announcements for a while, so it's like an uninvited guest
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Maybe you don't remember the announcer at Crewe in the 1960s - "This is Crewe...Crewe Station... Creeeewwwweee", with a downward, increasingly bass stress on the last one.
It sounded like a heavy groan at the end.
With the many crashes and bangs and noisy engines about the station, it was pretty inaudible anyway.
It's a particularly difficult name to project, of course, like Hull or even York.
py_megapixel
Established Member
They have it in Manchester now too. It's a nice feature, but it may be of limited use if the train is a long way away. (For example, "The 15:56 service to Manchester Airport is delayed. This train is currently at Abergele & Pensarn.")
The SWR version of Rodger is terrible and makes the GWR version sound good. I don’t understand who thought speeding him up and then adding extra pauses was a good idea. Their version of Anne is also not great but at least she remains relatively clear. They should have left the new version of Celia (and possibly added male KeTech replacement for Phil) as this would have been much more professional sounding than their current set up of slow Anne and chipmunk Rodger.
RealTrains07
Established Member
- Joined
- 28 Feb 2019
- Messages
- 1,761
The main issue with anne on SWR is her old recordings have been mashed together with newly recorded SWR ones which is fine but the tones of voice are very noticeably different which make the announcements sound uncomfortable to listen to as a result.
Even just adding in the older anne recordings of ‘service to’ and ‘calling at’ would be a big improvement as the announcements flow a lot better then.
Apart from being a bit fast at places, Roger is fine as an announcer voice though.
londonmidland
Established Member
SWR really didn’t need to spend all the time, effort and money to ‘dumb down’ the wording of the announcements. The default script is perfectly acceptable and easy to understand.
No only does it sound slower but also quite uneducated.
No only does it sound slower but also quite uneducated.
fgwrich
Established Member
Oh I don't know, I found the newer version of Celia to sound quite patronising at Winchester. The pauses were far too frequent with that version too, saying something more like "Platform Two for the South West Trains Service to London Waterlooooo"
However I do agree about ATOS Anne & Roger on SWR. As awful and as disappointing as they come. And why can't GWR bring back the much nicer sounding "Ruth" from Truro.
Who is the other female voice at Leeds? I can't think of an announcement she makes off the top of my head although I'm sure I've also heard her make manual announcements from time to time!
On the subject of manual announcements, I always find it rather odd hearing them at Wakefield Westgate rather than automated announcements...I know that is an LNER 'thing', but an interesting experience waiting around for a train there without a million 'see it say it sorted!' or 'due to today's wet weather even though the sun is shining outside' messages on a loop!
On the subject of manual announcements, I always find it rather odd hearing them at Wakefield Westgate rather than automated announcements...I know that is an LNER 'thing', but an interesting experience waiting around for a train there without a million 'see it say it sorted!' or 'due to today's wet weather even though the sun is shining outside' messages on a loop!
londonmidland
Established Member
NorthernSpirit
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,184
Maybe you don't remember the announcer at Crewe in the 1960s - "This is Crewe...Crewe Station... Creeeewwwweee", with a downward, increasingly bass stress on the last one.
It sounded like a heavy groan at the end.
With the many crashes and bangs and noisy engines about the station, it was pretty inaudible anyway. It's a particularly difficult name to project, of course, like Hull or even York.
Sadly not, as I was born in the late 1980's.
Chipmunk Rodger? Have SWR employed Alvin, Simon and Theodore?
This I've got to hear.
py_megapixel
Established Member
The next train to depart from platform Sevenbee will be the 17:35..... AVANTI.... WEST COAST! ... service to..... Londoneuston.Oh I don't know, I found the newer version of Celia to sound quite patronising at Winchester. The pauses were far too frequent with that version too, saying something more like "Platform Two for the South West Trains Service to London Waterlooooo"
However I do agree about ATOS Anne & Roger on SWR. As awful and as disappointing as they come. And why can't GWR bring back the much nicer sounding "Ruth" from Truro.
It might be less grating, and the script might be better, but it sounds a lot less professional, due to obviously being a mixture of different recordings.
Ashley Hill
Established Member
Ive never known their real names until now. Throughout the west the female auto-announcers have always been referred to as Digital Doris,wether on board or on station. Some refer to the male voice as Digital Derek or if in Wales Digital Dai.
Philip
On Moderation
My favourite station auto announcer was heard at Wigan and Warrington until about 2007, before the 'London Euston only' woman took over. I believe she stemmed from the BR days and was used on many of the intercity west coast stations at one point. One thing that sticks out was finishing a train announcement with "Good morning/afternoon, welcome to Warrington Bank Quay".
Newcastle uses manual announcements , and until recently Carlisle. Carlisle must be the furthest north railway station with anne announcements , Scottish stations dont use her.
londonmidland
Established Member
Every LNER managed station still has manual announcements. Thought there was an internal discussion(s) about the introduction of automated announcements being introduced at some point. No idea what the progress of this is though.
For some reason i thought i heard auto announcements at Newcastle, perhaps not. Do like manual ones at Newcastle
gimmea50anyday
Established Member
Newcastle and York are still fully manual, as are Darlington and Durham.
In Scotland it’s basically the same automated system but with a Scottish voice. with Leeds You get the standard atoc Annie voice with the normal announcements but additional announcements such as platform alterations uses a local dialect voice
In Scotland it’s basically the same automated system but with a Scottish voice. with Leeds You get the standard atoc Annie voice with the normal announcements but additional announcements such as platform alterations uses a local dialect voice
317666
Established Member
On a similar note, both Seven Sisters and Bishops Stortford still used an old BR system right up to 2011-2 when they were replaced with Anne.
py_megapixel
Established Member
Penrith uses Anne.
cosmo
Member
I've reason to believe Newcastle has gone automatic - probably because of staff shortages due to you-know-what.
- Status