I was at Ealing Broadway at about 10am this morning, to find a Central
Line train which had just arrived advertising its destination as "West
Ruislip".

When the driver for the Eastbound journey arrived, the train announced
"This is a Waterloo & City Line train to Waterloo". Good luck doing that
one, I thought.

Sometime after leaving Ealing Broadway, while travelling at a fairly
high speed, the train announced "Please leave the train."

Then, approaching White City, came the announcement "The next station is
South Ruislip where this train termin...cut off by driver".

It finally decided White City was next and announced as such, however
then announced "Thank you for travelling on the Waterloo & City line".

It was a highly amusing journey, but had me thinking: what could cause
this sort of behaviour? How connected are the ATO and announcement
systems? Can the announcer get confused, but the train know where it is?
Could it have been the train operator initiating messages manually and
having a bad day/having a laugh?

--
Ashley

Ashley Brown wrote:

It was a highly amusing journey, but had me thinking: what could
cause this sort of behaviour? How connected are the ATO and
announcement systems? Can the announcer get confused, but the
train know where it is? Could it have been the train operator
initiating messages manually and having a bad day/having a laugh?


Someone is having a collective leg pull of the Central Line punters. It
would take a really big breakage of the on-train describer unit to get
a 1992TS on the Central to say Waterloo!

I suspect the driver was fooling around...

--
Ashley

Ashley Brown wrote to uk.transport.london on Thu, 10 Feb 2005:

It was a highly amusing journey, but had me thinking: what could cause
this sort of behaviour? How connected are the ATO and announcement
systems? Can the announcer get confused, but the train know where it
is? Could it have been the train operator initiating messages manually
and having a bad day/having a laugh?

I don't know about the Underground system, but I do know my mother
recently travelled via Southern from Clapham Junction to Arundel on a
train where the announcer went backwards..... There had been some
problems that day and a train had been cancelled, and the following
train was only 4 carriages instead of the expected 8, which may have
been why.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 23 January 2005 with new photos

"Ashley Brown" wrote in
message ...
I was at Ealing Broadway at about 10am this morning, to find a Central
Line train which had just arrived advertising its destination as "West
Ruislip".

When the driver for the Eastbound journey arrived, the train announced
"This is a Waterloo & City Line train to Waterloo". Good luck doing that
one, I thought.

I've heard that a couple of times on a Central Line train about to leave
Ealing Broadway as well. Quickly followed by "thank you for travelling on
the Central Line", then everything as normal!

In article ,
(Ashley Brown) wrote:

I was at Ealing Broadway at about 10am this morning, to find a Central
Line train which had just arrived advertising its destination as "West
Ruislip".

When the driver for the Eastbound journey arrived, the train announced
"This is a Waterloo & City Line train to Waterloo". Good luck doing
that one, I thought.

Sometime after leaving Ealing Broadway, while travelling at a fairly
high speed, the train announced "Please leave the train."

Then, approaching White City, came the announcement "The next station
is South Ruislip where this train termin...cut off by driver".

It finally decided White City was next and announced as such, however
then announced "Thank you for travelling on the Waterloo & City line".

It was a highly amusing journey, but had me thinking: what could cause
this sort of behaviour? How connected are the ATO and announcement
systems? Can the announcer get confused, but the train know where it
is? Could it have been the train operator initiating messages manually
and having a bad day/having a laugh?

--
Ashley

We get spurious destination announcements on the Northern Line 95 stock,
such as announcing "the next station is Borough" as the train goes into
the tunnel at Colindale. Usually clears up after a few messages.

Roger