I travel to the station with a ticket. I then decide to stay a while and take a few pictures. Am I a passenger changing trains/waiting a connection,and idly taking a few pictures while I wait,or am I a railway photographer ?
It is suggested that you sign in/make your presence known - it never has been compulsory.Whether you sign in or not is your own personal choice. It is not wrong or right.
The terrorism argument is a smokescreen.
Nail, head, hit.
Why am I any different to any other passenger awaiting his connecting train at a station just because I happen to be carrying an SLR? I have a valid ticket, ergo I have a justifiable reason to be on the station. If I attempt to sign in, I will miss my train. I need no-one's permission to lift the camera to my eye and press the shutter, regardless of what or who I photograph. Once taken, the photograph, whether digital or conventional is my property and I do not need to show it to anyone.
If I intend to spend a reasonable period of time on a manned station, I will contact a member of staff and sign in if required. But, I choose to do so through courtesy, not because of any railway byelaw. A station is a private place to which the public have been granted access, the trouble is that staff are not correctly briefed and STILL seem to adopt the blanket approach that "Photography is not allowed".
I have never seen a member of station staff approach a person carrying a camera-phone asking them why they are on the station and who they work for, yet recently a member of staff at a major London station decided to walk the whole length of the platform to where I was standing and tell me with a straight face that I was not allowed to take photographs unless I asked permission. When I politely informed her of her mistake, she suggested that I could not be on the station unless I signed in first. When I produced my annual season ticket and explained that I was on my way home from work it seemed to confuse her somewhat and she then asked me who I worked for. I presume that if I had said "Osama Bin Laden" or "Alkie-Aida" something bad would have happened to me. During this time, a train was loading with passengers at the platform and there was no other member of staff monitoring the proceedings.
I suggest that had I not been a commuter with a camera on my way home, but instead was a swivel-eyed fundamentalist with a Lowepro bag full of hydrogen peroxide and chuppati flour, approaching me and asking dim questions was not a good idea. Frankly I'm fed up with being treated like a potential terrorist because my pastime of choice is to take photographs of trains rather than get tanked up on a Friday night and pick a fight with a bouncer or concern myself with what the latest Z-list celebrity is up to.