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Station announcements download

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danners430

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Hi folks,
I've been trying to find some station announcements to download and use on my model railway. Does anyone know where I can obtain downloads of Scottish announcements? I've hunted for a while, but can't find them. Also, I need German announcements too - any advice there?

Cheers
 
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319321

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Network Rail do provide them on a CD for those who make a Freedom of Information request for them.

The key thing seems to be to ask for (and limit your request to) announcements from a specific station that is managed by Network Rail.

As an example see this request which eventualy resulted on the requester being sent a CD of announcements from Euston.

Strathclyde Passenger Transport have provided them for the subway stations that are operated by them, as per their response here.

TFL have provided CD's of Overground announcement as referred to here (they also regularly send out ibus and underground announcement CD's).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I missed the key thing here - making my post relevent to the original question, which was for announcements from Scottish Stations!

Basically, you should make a Freedom of Information Act request to Network Rail for the announcements from Edinburgh Waverly or Glasgow Central stations (or two seperate requests).

If it of interest to you, you could also request the announcements from Strathclyde Underground.

It may also be worth making a FoI request to Strathclyde Passenger Transit for the announcements for the train lines that they run, though as their services are run by Scotrail they may not hold them.
 

AlterEgo

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Might I suggest that taking up staff time with FOI requests to help build your model railways isn't really in the *spirit* of the legislation?
 

319321

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Might I suggest that taking up staff time with FOI requests to help build your model railways isn't really in the *spirit* of the legislation?

I used to think like that, but then I spent too long on the whatdotheyknow.com website and saw:
= the number of obviously commercial companies who are using it to compile their own databases (do a search for tm44 air conditioning assessments);
= the amount of non-public FoI requests made to NHS organisations by drugs companies, pharmacy chains etc. so they can measure their own performance;
= the frivolous requests for information that ultimately get ignored or are of no use to the requester even when provided.

I have come to the conclusion that making a request for a CD of audio announcements for a model railway is 'not that bad' a request, and because it's made available under FoI for an individual to use, it gets around the possible copyright implications of a private individual making his own recordings of announcements (as the individual is making the copy, rather than the authority).
 

ash39

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I've always thought they'd be a good way to add an extra level of realism to a model without too much difficulty.

If anyone could get the rights to sell a full set of Phil Sayer announcements covering all TOC's, stations, times, platforms and other generic information, it would make an absolute fortune. Especially if easy to use. Trouble is I don't know who owns the rights to the recordings or how it would work legally.
 

LAX54

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Might I suggest that taking up staff time with FOI requests to help build your model railways isn't really in the *spirit* of the legislation?

Tine AND Costs ! plus you would not have though that it comes under FOI !
talk about wasting peoples time and money
 

danners430

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2 Dec 2016
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Location
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Thanks for the help guys,
I made a FOI request to NR, but they responded saying that they couldn't supply the recordings, as they were held by a third party company, so it would be violating corporate interests. Fair enough - Link
I've checked out the website named above, it seems to be perfect - thanks for bringing it to my attention! I just need to get Audacity out, do a little editing, and I'll be able to create an (almost) full folder of announcements, simply needing put together. Thanks for suggesting that!
 

bramling

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Might I suggest that taking up staff time with FOI requests to help build your model railways isn't really in the *spirit* of the legislation?

He pays his taxes and all that ...

As a taxpayer there's a *lot* of things I would prefer my tax contributions not to go towards. The cost of a few FOI requests is pretty minimal in comparison.
 
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