Great Western Coffee Shop

All from this evening.

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"The Ely train is the four carriages further from the barrier".    Stupid way of putting it - how am I supposed to know  as I walk past some carriages how many more there are forward of where I am?   Are there 8 or 12 in the platform?

"Please do not join the four coaches at the rear of the platform" might have been better.

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"The train standing at platform 2 is for Portsmouth Harbour via Eastleigh. This train comprises 3 carriages".   Err - I can see that  ;D

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"We are being held at a red signal" .   I guess that means stop  ;D - or have we stopped to admire a communist signal?

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"First Class accommodation is at the front of the train, standard class in the middle are rear, and cycle spaces at the very rear".   Yes, but which direction is the train going??

All trifling matters. Try actually getting through the gateline first.

 >:( :P ;)

I feel your pain. Never had it quite as bad as you seem to get it sometimes; threatened a couple of times - neither at all recently - but staff have backed off.   Mind - adventures of my own -  I had a 75 minute wait for a bus when one failed to turn up ... leaving me 20 minutes late for a bus users group meeting.  However - I'm still traveling (Royston) so I could hit problems at Cambridge.

To make you sick - barriers open all the way except on the tube.   There was one check on train.

I frequently get trains at Temple Meads that have come from Bristol Parkway direction and head towards Westbury - they change direction in Temple Meads and head back out again. Often the ones I am on split at Westbury and some part goes onwards to Weymouth or wherever and another part is left behind.

This is often announced on the platform along the lines of: "The front x coaches will terminate at Westbury." This makes some sense when you know what they mean but the change in direction often confuses people.

I believe that this wording is a deliberate attempt to improve on earlier language which talked about "front trains" and "rear trains" after passengers complained that they didn't know which end was the front.  Perhaps an understandable confusion at a through platform.  At a bay platform it harder to see the confusion, but still what you regard as the train in front is a function of which direction you are looking at the platform from.  The train at the front on the way in becomes the train at the back on the way out so I can see some might be confused.  The "further from the barrier's language might be less elegant, but it is less ambiguous.

Be very grateful then - not everyone can....

A couple of years or so ago, when returning from London Waterloo to Exeter, I remember an on-train automated announcement along the lines of ........

"the rear six coaches of this six coach train will terminate at Salisbury. The front three coaches will continue on to Exeter St Davids"

The TM made a 'manual' announcement shortly afterwards correcting the automated faux pas - indicating that the service was normally nine coaches as far as Salisbury.