Mind The Gap

Photo by luisvilla

I had a good chuckle this morning reading this article in the Guardian about RailSpeak.

It reminded me of the manager who came from the airline industry, and decided that all RailSpeak had to stop and our announcements had to be dumbed down. She told us that passengers (sorry, Customers!) didn't know what we were talking about about when we used technical words like 'points' and 'signals'. She then decided that we only ever needed to use two phrases to describe any problem delaying us. Either, "The train is broken" or "The track is broken".

Like many of my colleagues, I ignored the word from on-high and continued using the phrases I had been using for many years. What she had failed to understand was that people grow up hearing these words. Thomas The Tank Engine has to deal with broken points in every second episode!

People come to expect hearing RailSpeak phrases like "depart" and "terminate". The cynical commuter may become jaded by them, but for the twice-a-year traveller they're a symbol that they're actually on a journey, that they're in another world for a couple of hours and the strangeness is to be savoured. Imagine the outcry if it was decided that tennis had to use the word "zero" instead of "love" to denote no score, it would take away from the richness of the game.

In saying all that, there are some of my colleagues who I would quite happily ban from using the PA. Like the steward who takes ten minutes to list every single item they have for sale on their trolley, or the Train Manager who told the passengers "For those of you hoping to catch the connection to Aberdeen, tough. You've missed it." And another gem from the same guy: "Buses replace trains from Carlisle. You won't see me on the bus, though. I'm getting a taxi."

And I still cringe at the time I got a frog in my throat just as I was saying the name of my company, 'Cross Country'. Only one syllable was broadcast to the entire train.