On Dec 7, 5:00*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

Would it be enough to establish a controlled vocabulary for describing
kinds of stopping patterns - some or all of 'fast', 'slow', 'local',
'stopping', 'express', 'flyer', 'metro', and whatever else you can think
of - and giving them well-defined meanings which were consistent across
the country and over time (controlled by NR or the DfT rather than the
ToCs, i assume), then applying them everywhere. So in our original
example, when Mr Pedan3 strolled into Reading, he would have seen a sign
saying something like:

1945 Paddington SLOW
Calling at Maidenhead, Taplow, Marlow, Barlow and Farlow, and every other
bloody place between here and Timbuktu
Arrives Paddington 2239 (tomorrow)

And would instantly have known that (a) he could take this train to
Paddington but that (b) he would be wiser not to.

And how about having a stop written in italics, or brackets, or lowercase,
if there's another train (or sensible combination of trains) which will
get you there faster?

How do Switzerland and Germany approach this problem?

Exactly in the way you describe (as do several other 'real' European
countries) - using a nationally consistent hierarchy of names/
designations for trains (ICE/EC/IC/IR/RE/RB/S-Bahn etc). This sort of
standardisation is sadly entirely beyond our grasp (cf. the use of a
national symbol in Germany for U-Bahn, S-Bahn and bus/tram stop,
despite different operators in different cities). I don't really know
why.