Do you mean they lock the gates out of use so you have to use another one, or that they just close the gates so you have to insert your ticket to open it?
Of course, as you and many members will be aware, sometimes both actions are needed - either for passenger flow and thus safety, or simply because you have to draw the line somewhere and close the barriers!
That may be down to local culture. I personally find ScotRail staff the most friendly of all, but it may simply be that some of the staff working there are not particularly extrovert, or that you caught them on a few bad days. I don't think many railway staff say "hello" to passengers in the vast majority of places.
I know a fair few staff in different parts of the country, from all sorts of different TOCs, will be a bit more friendly and say "hello" or similar to customers. It doesn't take much effort if you're making eye contact with someone and it's appropriate. Obviously, if you have a really crowded station, you might look a bit silly greeting each passenger, but I do find a lot of staff will still be friendly and it's amazing how little time you need to work out if you could spend a moment with someone and make their journey a tad better.
London Underground drivers are required to make announcements when the train does not move for 30 seconds iirc. National Rail do not have such a requirement, for the simple reason that most of the time the driver would not even know what the reason for the hold-up is.
At one or two TOCs, announcements are suggested (but not imperative) after two or three minutes, if there is some out-of-course delay. That can be a bit OTT, but then again, you can go to the other extreme and forget after 10 or 15mins of delay, which is unacceptable but easily done. So the earlier you can advise customers, sometimes the better!
In some areas of the country (especially around South London/the South Coast) there are quite a few open-data train running information websites specific to the region, and occasionally even phone signal (
), which can mean the guard/conductor/revenue/platform staff can get an inkling of whether or not there is an issue before the driver(s) may have heard on the radio/GSM-R etc. Similar can sometimes also be done with national tools, eg. RealTimeTrains or NRE. It's really a case of being proactive on a personal level, provided it is safe and appropriate to look up the information. Likewise use of company phones - or just being alert to how local signalling works, if it can show an unusual sequence of trains in sections, which may indicate delays.
