"Roland Perry" wrote in message

I was on a bus today and we passed a stop called "MFI", except that
branch has closed now like the others. Elsewhere in the town are stops
named after corporate HQs like Boots and Experian.

How many railway stations suffer the same hostage to fortune (I'll
ignore airport for now)? IBM springs to mind, any others?

Coincidentally, today's Guargian has a commentary by David McKie on this
very topic:

*Your brand goes here*

Railway stations have long been named after pubs, but next stop could be
Primark Paddington

The news that the cash-strapped New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority has accepted an offer of $4m to adopt the name Barclays for
its subway station at Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street is likely to
cause apprehension among those who believe that what America does today,
Britain will do tomorrow. A wealth of comforting precedents might
plausibly be cited. There's already a station called IBM on the Glasgow
to Wemyss Bay line, though that's reserved for the use of IBM only. A
station at Kilbowie near Clydebank has long been known as Singer, after
the US manufacturer of sewing machines which in 1906 created close by
the largest factory of its kind in Europe.

There might even have been an underground station called Selfridge's.
Having established his great Oxford Street store, Gordon Selfridge urged
the managing director of the line operator, a personal friend, to bestow
the name of his store on Bond Street station. He failed, though years
later his friend told him he now regretted having refused.

The practice of naming stations after commercial enterprises was
commonplace from the beginning. The institutions in question were pubs.
The railway companies did not ask for any subvention; they picked these
names because the pub was the only recognisable building around. Since
the coming of the railway led to new villages growing up round the
station, the pub name gave birth to the name of the village, which is
why a village near Hay-on-Wye is known as Three Cocks. Sometimes the
prissier railway companies dropped the pub name and chose something more
salubrious, which is how Jolly Sailor became Norwood Junction, and
Dartmouth Arms was refurbished as Forest Hill.

Craven Arms, on the line that runs south through Shropshire, sought for
some time to better itself by adding the name of a celebrated fortified
manor house a mile distant and calling itself Craven Arms and Stokesay -
a practice dropped in the 1970s. The North Eastern Railway, disliking
the name Egglescliffe, a village near Yarm and Stockton, decided to call
their station Eaglescliffe, which they felt had a greater cachet.

The town now known as Nelson, in Lancashire, was once known as Marsden,
but this led to confusion with Marsden in Yorkshire. So the railways
adopted a modified version of the name of the principal pub, the Lord
Nelson, and despite some flirtation with Nelson-in-Marsden, the town
duly did so too. What is now Eastleigh station, in Hampshire, was
originally known as Bishopstoke, but passengers for Bishopstoke kept
getting off at Basingstoke, so they changed it. In other cases, the
companies repented of original names clearly designed to mislead.
Lampeter Road, which hinted at a useful stop for passengers from
Lampeter, Carmarthenshire, turned out to be a footsore 16 miles away; in
a later fit of honesty they renamed it Llanwrda. Tulloch on the West
Highland line, represented itself as a station serving Kingussie; the
distance between the two was 30 miles.

And after all, it will further be said, the practice of renaming places
after companies is reassuringly familiar from the worlds of sport and
the arts. Sometimes that applies to spanking new stadiums such as the
Arsenal's Emirates or Bolton's Reebok or Wigan's JJB (which in the
coming season, I see, will be the DW). Sometimes it's a matter of new
money for old venues: the Oval became Foster's Oval, though it's now the
Brit Oval. We could surely therefore reconcile ourselves in these
straitened times to sponsors' names on our railway stations too. The
name Barclays in New York will reflect the stations closeness to a new
Barclays Center, a sports arena -- a precedent perhaps for Manchester
Victoria station to be renamed MEN Arena, since that's only minutes
away, or for North Greenwich Underground station to follow the lead of
the Millennium Dome and redesignate itself O2.

Perhaps the juiciest commercial opportunities here are the new
subterranean stations designed to serve the Crossrail line through
London, an enterprise said to be threatened by recent economic events.
Surely, it will shortly be argued, it's preferable to do lucrative deals
with sponsors rather than see the project die. Better to journey from
Primark Paddington to Lloyds Liverpool Street via Barclays Bond Street
and TalkTalk Tottenham Court Road, than not to be able to travel the
line at all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/10/railways-crossrail-barclays-new-york

On 10 Aug, 12:26, "Recliner" wrote:
"Roland Perry" wrote in message



I was on a bus today and we passed a stop called "MFI", except that
branch has closed now like the others. Elsewhere in the town are stops
named after corporate HQs like Boots and Experian.

How many railway stations suffer the same hostage to fortune (I'll
ignore airport for now)? IBM springs to mind, any others?

Coincidentally, today's Guargian has a commentary by David McKie on this
very topic:

*Your brand goes here*

Railway stations have long been named after pubs, but next stop could be
Primark Paddington

The news that the cash-strapped New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority has accepted an offer of $4m to adopt the name Barclays for
its subway station at Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street is likely to
cause apprehension among those who believe that what America does today,
Britain will do tomorrow. A wealth of comforting precedents might
plausibly be cited. There's already a station called IBM on the Glasgow
to Wemyss Bay line, though that's reserved for the use of IBM only. A
station at Kilbowie near Clydebank has long been known as Singer, after
the US manufacturer of sewing machines which in 1906 created close by
the largest factory of its kind in Europe.

There might even have been an underground station called Selfridge's.
Having established his great Oxford Street store, Gordon Selfridge urged
the managing director of the line operator, a personal friend, to bestow
the name of his store on Bond Street station. He failed, though years
later his friend told him he now regretted having refused.

The practice of naming stations after commercial enterprises was
commonplace from the beginning. The institutions in question were pubs.
The railway companies did not ask for any subvention; they picked these
names because the pub was the only recognisable building around. Since
the coming of the railway led to new villages growing up round the
station, the pub name gave birth to the name of the village, which is
why a village near Hay-on-Wye is known as Three Cocks. Sometimes the
prissier railway companies dropped the pub name and chose something more
salubrious, which is how Jolly Sailor became Norwood Junction, and
Dartmouth Arms was refurbished as Forest Hill.

Craven Arms, on the line that runs south through Shropshire, sought for
some time to better itself by adding the name of a celebrated fortified
manor house a mile distant and calling itself Craven Arms and Stokesay -
a practice dropped in the 1970s. The North Eastern Railway, disliking
the name Egglescliffe, a village near Yarm and Stockton, decided to call
their station Eaglescliffe, which they felt had a greater cachet.

The town now known as Nelson, in Lancashire, was once known as Marsden,
but this led to confusion with Marsden in Yorkshire. So the railways
adopted a modified version of the name of the principal pub, the Lord
Nelson, and despite some flirtation with Nelson-in-Marsden, the town
duly did so too. What is now Eastleigh station, in Hampshire, was
originally known as Bishopstoke, but passengers for Bishopstoke kept
getting off at Basingstoke, so they changed it. In other cases, the
companies repented of original names clearly designed to mislead.
Lampeter Road, which hinted at a useful stop for passengers from
Lampeter, Carmarthenshire, turned out to be a footsore 16 miles away; in
a later fit of honesty they renamed it Llanwrda. Tulloch on the West
Highland line, represented itself as a station serving Kingussie; the
distance between the two was 30 miles.

And after all, it will further be said, the practice of renaming places
after companies is reassuringly familiar from the worlds of sport and
the arts. Sometimes that applies to spanking new stadiums such as the
Arsenal's Emirates or Bolton's Reebok or Wigan's JJB (which in the
coming season, I see, will be the DW). Sometimes it's a matter of new
money for old venues: the Oval became Foster's Oval, though it's now the
Brit Oval. We could surely therefore reconcile ourselves in these
straitened times to sponsors' names on our railway stations too. The
name Barclays in New York will reflect the stations closeness to a new
Barclays Center, a sports arena -- a precedent perhaps for Manchester
Victoria station to be renamed MEN Arena, since that's only minutes
away, or for North Greenwich Underground station to follow the lead of
the Millennium Dome and redesignate itself O2.

Perhaps the juiciest commercial opportunities here are the new
subterranean stations designed to serve the Crossrail line through
London, an enterprise said to be threatened by recent economic events.
Surely, it will shortly be argued, it's preferable to do lucrative deals
with sponsors rather than see the project die. Better to journey from
Primark Paddington to Lloyds Liverpool Street via Barclays Bond Street
and TalkTalk Tottenham Court Road, than not to be able to travel the
line at all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/10/railways-crossrai...

Jeez; just imagine what the announcements would be like.

MIG wrote:

Jeez; just imagine what the announcements would be like.

Gap have been sponsoring announcements on the Bank Central Line platforms
for years.

In message
"Basil Jet" wrote:

MIG wrote:

Jeez; just imagine what the announcements would be like.

Gap have been sponsoring announcements on the Bank Central Line platforms
for years.



basil brush

Boom Boom!

/bb

--
Graeme Wall

This address not read, substitute trains for rail
Transport Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:26:30 +0100, Recliner
wrote:

Coincidentally, today's Guargian has a commentary by David McKie on this
very topic:
...
The practice of naming stations after commercial enterprises was
commonplace from the beginning. The institutions in question were pubs.
The railway companies did not ask for any subvention; they picked these
names because the pub was the only recognisable building around. Since
the coming of the railway led to new villages growing up round the
station, the pub name gave birth to the name of the village, which is
why a village near Hay-on-Wye is known as Three Cocks. Sometimes the
prissier railway companies dropped the pub name and chose something more
salubrious, which is how Jolly Sailor became Norwood Junction, and
Dartmouth Arms was refurbished as Forest Hill.

Craven Arms, on the line that runs south through Shropshire, sought for
some time to better itself by adding the name of a celebrated fortified
manor house a mile distant and calling itself Craven Arms and Stokesay -
a practice dropped in the 1970s.

Not a million miles from there, did Pontypool and New Inn come about in a
similar way?

Colin McKenzie

--
No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at the
population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as walking.
Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.

"Roland Perry" wrote

I was on a bus today and we passed a stop called "MFI", except that
branch has closed now like the others. Elsewhere in the town are
stops
named after corporate HQs like Boots and Experian.

For example within the M25, bus timetables for routes passing though
Addlestone, Surrey now refer to "Addlestone Center" rather than
"Addlestone, Woolworths"

--
Mike D

Basil Jet wrote:
MIG wrote:

Jeez; just imagine what the announcements would be like.

Gap have been sponsoring announcements on the Bank Central Line
platforms for years.

I'm looking forward to "Please do not leave your Gucci luggage unattended.
Gucci luggage is PARTICULARLY attractive to bombers..."

--
Brian
"Fight like the Devil, die like a gentleman."
www.imagebus.co.uk/shop