I was just chatting with staff at Woking and asked why the manual announcements were so quite that they couldn't be heard.
They said it was due to residents in the near by flats complaining. So I then asked why aren't they the same volume as the automated announcements which could be heard and they replied, we don't have any control over the automated announcements but we do over the manual ones.
Now the flats were built long after the railway was put in so find this state of affairs ludicrous.
If a loud manual announcement bothered me and I lived in the flats, I can't see how an automated one wouldn't. Besides far more automated ones are played than manual.
Surely people buy the flats for convenience to the station and not how quiet they are.
The conversation came about after I alighted from the 18.54 Basingstoke service and heard an announcement I could barely make out. I then checked the departure board and saw the train to Portsmouth Harbour wasn't showing on the departure screen. I checked the summery screen and headed to platform 2. As I was doing that the automated announcement for the Basingstoke service was played, as the train was now just about to leave so you couldn't boaed it. To be fair it would have been played earlier but I'm ever hopeful the railway companies can introduce a system where by late announcements don't get played.
As I reached platform 2 I heard an automated announcement for the Portsmouth Harbour train on platform 2. This caused a few passengers on platform 5 to start jogging.
Now if they are not allowed to make manual announcements that people can hear, how about just cueing up automated ones with platform changes. They are wasting their breath if they are not allowed to let us hear them.
Perhaps the future is everyone wearing headphones with announcements going into those, then everywhere else can be silent, well except for traffic; trains and wildlife.
They said it was due to residents in the near by flats complaining. So I then asked why aren't they the same volume as the automated announcements which could be heard and they replied, we don't have any control over the automated announcements but we do over the manual ones.
Now the flats were built long after the railway was put in so find this state of affairs ludicrous.
If a loud manual announcement bothered me and I lived in the flats, I can't see how an automated one wouldn't. Besides far more automated ones are played than manual.
Surely people buy the flats for convenience to the station and not how quiet they are.
The conversation came about after I alighted from the 18.54 Basingstoke service and heard an announcement I could barely make out. I then checked the departure board and saw the train to Portsmouth Harbour wasn't showing on the departure screen. I checked the summery screen and headed to platform 2. As I was doing that the automated announcement for the Basingstoke service was played, as the train was now just about to leave so you couldn't boaed it. To be fair it would have been played earlier but I'm ever hopeful the railway companies can introduce a system where by late announcements don't get played.
As I reached platform 2 I heard an automated announcement for the Portsmouth Harbour train on platform 2. This caused a few passengers on platform 5 to start jogging.
Now if they are not allowed to make manual announcements that people can hear, how about just cueing up automated ones with platform changes. They are wasting their breath if they are not allowed to let us hear them.
Perhaps the future is everyone wearing headphones with announcements going into those, then everywhere else can be silent, well except for traffic; trains and wildlife.