Yes, would like Alison McKay to be rolled out again in Glasgow suburbia but as she's on a different system I'm worried it wont happen. Bizarrely Rutherglen was voiced by her, but one stop down at Cambuslang (and beyond) and you had Scottish Female
Anne, despite probably being an employee is actually really good imo and would actually like to see her do the voice of Glasgow Central / Queen St and Edinburgh Waverley. A good announcer for larger stations in particular.
Cambuslang and Rutherglen are on two different LLPA systems. There are eight different LLPA covering the Scotrail network. Cambuslang is part of Motherwell LLPA where as Rutherglen is part of North Clyde LLPA instead. For many years the North Clyde LLPA was Ketech (Alison Mckay) before switching to ASL ("Scottish Female") where as the Motherwell LLPA was always on the ASL ("Scottish Female") system.
Apparently the Ayrshire LLPA is supposed to be getting switched from Ketech (Alison Mckay) to ASL ("Scottish Female") at some point soon but it has not happened yet.
I am not much of a fan of Anne announcements but i would definitely prefer Anne at Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central High Level and Glasgow Queen Street Low Level instead of the current Karen Cunningham announcements.
I usually hedge my bets and stress both, and speak verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry, verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slooooooooowly. I could never be an announcer full stop, but especially not on a suburban line where most stations have multiple-word names!
Personally, I really like the Martin Oldfield announcements on 333s, and Justine Harris on Azumas (well, I like Justine Harris's voice, not the wording of the announcements!) - so, if I had to pick two announcers from anywhere on the network, I'd pick those two.
In terms of more plausible replacements, I also very much like Alison McKay's announcements.
Martin Oldfield is a great voice. They should have rolled him out to the entire Northern fleet as his voice works very well. He would be a good replacement for Phil Sayer at the stations too.
I suspect that the words are recorded separately and assembled by the software.
On the South Western route to Epsom, the announcements always stressed "Park", as in Raynes PARK, Motspur PARK, Worcester PARK, and the three "parks" sounded identical. You'd never speak them that way, so I'm fairly sure they'd been recorded separately.
I do not think they are recorded separately. I have seen plenty of original announcement files and station names with more than one word are always still recorded as one file. So i think station names are almost always recorded all in one go as one file. Different parts of announcements will be all recorded separately and the software pieces them together but station names are almost always recorded as one recording.
KeTech seem to be using "The Only Woman" to infill things Celia is missing such as Lumo and information on connecting bus services so maybe they will just carry on doing that for the forseeable? To be fair, Alison wouldn't sound out of place in England, she already has a lot of the Northern network recorded and she doesn't have a particularly strong accent so wouldn't sound too out of place. I'm not a fan of Matt's announcements, he uses too much vocal fry in my opinion and rushes through the calling points at stations.
To be fair, ATW/TfW can be blamed for her on board intonations being off because they've uploaded the mid-sentence ones for the 'This train is for...' when it should be the end of sentence ones.
ATOS uses three recordings per station, start of sentence, mid sentence and end of sentence. Her start of sentence 'Bristol Temple Meads' occasionally heard at Newport puts more emphasis on the 'MEADS' and less on the 'Bristol'. This seems to be similar for most of her start of sentence recordings as she does it for 'Craven ARMS, Cardiff CENTRAL' etc too. But her mid-sentence ones are 'CRAVEN Arms' and 'CARDIFF Central'. Maybe they should've used her start of sentence ones for on board vice mid-sentence for them to flow better.
Yes i think "Only Woman" is definitely the number one best replacement for Celia Drummond so hopefully Ketech will use her if they decide to fully replace Celia Drummond at some point. I think "Only Woman" has probably already recorded every station in the UK. So if Ketech can get hold of all of the files from Amey then they may not even have to get her to record anything else. So it would be a nice and easy switch.
That old "Boofay" lady from the Racal system who was used at FGE and FGW and SE stations in the early 2000s was another great voice. I have no idea who she is but she would be a good replacement for Celia Drummond too if she is still alive.
Pauline Cavilla who did the announcements at all the Southeastern stations throughout the 2000s would be another great replacement for Celia Drummond i think. She is still alive and working as a voiceover so she could definitely be used.
Emma Hignett would work very well too. I would be quite happy if they decided to use her as a Celia Drummond replacement.
He’s way too joe-down-the-road to voice train announcements. He sounds ridiculous.
I agree there. I am not a fan of Matt announcements. He sounds too common and amateur for announcements. Matt reminds me of Adrian Hieatt (the 1973 Stock and 1995 Stock "See It Say It Sort It" voice) and Dan Akers (the S Stock "Mind The Gap" voice) and the old SWT 458/0 man and the old HC 360 man and the old FGE 360 man. They are all very common sounding voices. Not exactly suitable for railway announcements.
No plans at Northern at least to move away from Ketech and that's coming down to us from the top guy that brought Ketech in, in the first place. As a user of both I preferred the ATOS system but hey ho!
That is certainly good to hear. I am glad that Ketech is being kept. These days the Atos Worldline system is used everywhere so it is nice to have some variety.
