A New Station Called !

[Brush 4]

The station reopened on Feb 21 this year. Has the announcement been saying Exclamation Mark since then? Amazing that no-one in officialdom has noticed but then, automated systems in general are rarely monitored, just left to get on with it, however ludicrously.

 

[Spartacus]

I noticed his sign the last time I drove past. In fairness the area around it has changed considerably with the opening of the station, with a rather large car park accompanying it, as well as landscape changes, a rather hefty road junction change, much of which I can see little point in. It's gone from being landscape on 3 sides to only 1. That said, a good deal of money seemed to be spent on the place maybe a year before station construction commenced, when it being built was practically a certainty, I'd assumed it had been sold to a new owner at the time. Maybe he'd got a good sum from TfW either as compensation or from land purchase and had invested it in the property rather than possibly selling up. I often find those who moan the loudest are those who realise they've made a bad choice.

 

[Dr Day]

The audio "exclamation mark" for new stations must be a feature of TfW's software. Worcestershire Parkway is also announced by the automatic system as "Exclamation Mark" ie Cross Country service calling at Chepstow, Gloucester, Cheltenham Spa, Exclamation Mark, University and Birmingham New Street. This dates back further than Bow Street.

 

[TheSel]

It's a good job Westward Ho! no longer has its station then.

 

[stut]

Perhaps the resident in question doesn't like the trains now coming to a full stop.

Or perhaps there's other issues in his life causing him stress, like issue with his colon.

 

[zwk500]

Perhaps the resident in question doesn't like the trains now coming to a full stop.

Or perhaps there's other issues in his life causing him stress, like issue with his colon.

Oh very good.

 

[Brush 4]

He probably drives an old Commer van........

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The audio "exclamation mark" for new stations must be a feature of TfW's software. Worcestershire Parkway is also announced by the automatic system as "Exclamation Mark" ie Cross Country service calling at Chepstow, Gloucester, Cheltenham Spa, Exclamation Mark, University and Birmingham New Street. This dates back further than Bow Street.

Based on a certain musical combo from New York City, I'm led to believe that "!" should actually be pronounced "chk". Wikipedia entry.

 

[pitdiver]

Slightly off topic but when I worked for National Express we opened the new Coachway near jct 14 of the M1. We were on our own then. We could therefore do announcements over the PA system about coach arrivals etc. However by the time I left we had to reduce the number of announcements we did and their volume as not to disturb the newly built houses.
The reduction in the number and volume practically made them worthless.
My argument was " We were here first" cut no ice with the new residents.

 

[krus_aragon]

An exclamation mark is used as a negation mark in several aspects of computer science (e.g. " != " for "not equal to" ). Perhaps this is/was used internally to label stations that should not be included in an announcement, but this one somehow slipped through.

 

[BayPaul]

An exclamation mark is used as a negation mark in several aspects of computer science (e.g. " != " for "not equal to" ). Perhaps this is/was used internally to label stations that should not be included in an announcement, but this one somehow slipped through.

That would make some sense, except that someone has programmed (or spoken, not sure if ATW is text to voice or recorded) the words Exclamation and Mark, which would not naturally be associated with the ! symbol by a computer

 

[krus_aragon]

That would make some sense, except that someone has programmed (or spoken, not sure if ATW is text to voice or recorded) the words Exclamation and Mark, which would not naturally be associated with the ! symbol by a computer

The automated announcements at smaller TfW stations do make use of text-to-speech, and their pronunciation of Welsh placenames can leave something to be desired. (That was the case in ATW days, at least.)

Reading out less-common punctuation is relatively commonplace in such software too. Around the turn of the century, a friend of mine had fun telling a computer to read out "<><><><>", which came out as "left-angle-bracket-right-angle-bracket-left-angle-bracket..."

 

[DelW]

I suspect it is a text-to-speech issue...

Some of my local buses call at stops that appear on the dot matrix display as "King Edward's Sch" (short for school) and "Witley Stn" (short for station). At one time the accompanying audio announcer rendered these as "King Edward's ess-see-aitch" and "Witley ess-tee-en".

I haven't been on that route for a while, so not sure if it's been fixed now or not.