D6130
Established Member
To emphasis the point, a pub in Sowerby Bridge - until recently called "William's"....and before that the "William IV" - has recently been renamed the "Sore Bee".
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Northern re-records 34 station name announcements with local pronunciation
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Mcr Warrior
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 8 Jan 2009
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- 14,520
How should the first part of 'Headbolt Lane' actually be pronounced?
"Hedd-bolt" or "Heed-bolt" or is it something else?
"Hedd-bolt" or "Heed-bolt" or is it something else?
Think of Frankenstein's monster. Head to rhyme with head. (or dead. or bled)
Not that anyone (even in Kirkby) had heard of Headbolt Lane before the station was planned.
railrambler
Member
I don’t know whether we’ve been down the road (or rail) on another post but it would put a smile on the faces of many passengers including myself, if there were celebrities making the announcements on trains.
For instance on the Clitheroe to Rochdale Northern service we could have Peter Kay announcing the stations ! This would be nice, especially at this time of year, if some charity could benefit ?
Any more suggestions apart from our King advising us to “please mind the step” ???
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If they are that bothered they should spell it properly!
SiTheTrainGuy
Member
They’re supposedly updating the 333’s with a new train fx system. Most 333’s have some sort of auto announcer issues now that appear not to being fixed due to this.
How do you pronounce sower as in someone who sows seeds?
consettman
Member
The constant tinkering with the Tyne Valley stations is both hilarious and irritating.
Prudhoe has recently been (correctly) spliced in as Pruddah, but badly spliced in, and sounds like a slightly disturbed dog barking.
ISTR that Wylam briefly, and bizarrely, became Willum. Then back to Wylam again once the joke was discovered.
Corbridge is now rendered as pure Four-Yorkshiremen - Corrr...BRIDGE! - pronounced with thumbs hooked into braces.
Prudhoe has recently been (correctly) spliced in as Pruddah, but badly spliced in, and sounds like a slightly disturbed dog barking.
ISTR that Wylam briefly, and bizarrely, became Willum. Then back to Wylam again once the joke was discovered.
Corbridge is now rendered as pure Four-Yorkshiremen - Corrr...BRIDGE! - pronounced with thumbs hooked into braces.
ElbowGrease
New Member
These announcements are dreadful and the sooner they are replaced with something that’s even remotely professional, the better.
The venom with which he spits “Allen’s West” is actually really unpleasant to have to listen to.
The venom with which he spits “Allen’s West” is actually really unpleasant to have to listen to.
Halish Railway
Established Member
It seems that the voice has been changed again on the Televic equipped Class 195s and 331s. I noticed this whilst travelling from Barrow-in-Furness to Lancaster yesterday.
I do recognise the male voice, as it was used either for some of the re-recorded station names or for safety announcements. It hadn’t changed on the Class 156s I travelled on though.
I do recognise the male voice, as it was used either for some of the re-recorded station names or for safety announcements. It hadn’t changed on the Class 156s I travelled on though.
Yes they have changed it to David Curtis recently. He is another staff member. You are correct that he was previously used for infills whenenever they needed some new recordings. The announcements on Northern are becoming a comedy show. They are messing around with them and changing voices and scripts every couple weeks. The announcements sound awful and so amateur. They had perfect announcements voiced by Trisha Jarman and then they decided to mess up everything. Those new Peter Corley announcements were awful and these new David Curtis ones are even worse in my opinion. They should just admit their mistake and go back to the excellent quality original Trisha Jarman announcements.
ModernRailways
Established Member
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- 21 Apr 2011
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- 2,111
They’re only on the CAF fleet at the moment. It would be nice if Northern could just get some professional announcements again. A well-spoken Geordie, or just go for someone with a generic clear British sounding voice like the vast majority of TOCs have.
It’s a harsh change when you go from any other TOC announcements to then Northern. Just makes the whole operation seem unprofessional and scraped together.
BeijingDave
Member
- Joined
- 26 Jul 2019
- Messages
- 575
The North West has already been unfortunately colonised by Greggs (over its own excellent local pie shops), no thanks to Geordie voices on the trains too.
Halish Railway
Established Member
I believe that the server that the old Trisha announcements worked off of was pretty broken. It was riddled with issues such as shouting names of stations beginning with W, whispering “the next station stop is”, not pronouncing Frizinghall correctly and for about a week a few years ago adopted the SWR approach of saying “this train is now approaching…”
I do think that the new David Curtis announcements sound perfectly good, but still, do any other TOCs experience this many issues with their automated announcements?
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RailWonderer
Established Member
An AI generated Phil Sayer would settle everything and be done with it.
YorksLad12
Established Member
It absolutely would!
I caught the York-Leeds shuttle this afternoon - felt odd not to hear "Lee-eeds" from Peter, but sounded good enough for me. And it didn't say "this is Leeds" three times on approach.
Even the awful robotic text to speech voices used by SWR are better than some of the Northern clips are now. Indeed any of the free voices on Google Chrome are probably better, albeit obviously not customised to pronounce place names.
I find it ridiculous, and also pointless, that they replaced Trisha Jarman & Seb with Peter Corley & Laura Palmer.
And now here we are, less than 2 years later and they've ditched the 2 new voices to replace them with 2 more newer voices (David Curtis & the unnamed Geordie/Scottish woman).
It's a total disgrace, and i'd like to question what the heck Northern are actually doing at the minute.
My one positive comment about the new announcemnets by David Curtis is that despite sounding very amateur, he comes across as friendlier and more welcoming than Peter ever did. Personally, I found Peter's announcements quite rude & unwelcoming
It's only on the CAF units at the minute (The 195s and 331s). They're fitted with a Televic PIS, which is updated remotely from an office - meaning that the entire fleet can be updated with new announcements overnight
The rest of fleet (Barring the 333s - for the time being) use TrainFX - which has to be updated manually by changing SD Cards.
When the announcements were changed from Trisha Jarman/Seb to Peter Corley/Laura Palmer, the entire CAF fleet was done overnight, with the rest of the fleet (Barring the 333s) being updated gradually over a few months
Sf9k
Member
Noticed that they've started to replace some of the announcements for stations over here on the Tees Valley Line as well. The new one (I assume David Curtis) certainly sounds more friendly and casual than Peter Corley, even Allens West sounds much better! They seem to be half-done on a few trains at the moment, as it looks like only the stations from A-E have been replaced on the Sprinters so far.
styles
Member
Nice to have them fixed on automated announcements.
Amuses me when the on board staff give it a shot though.
London Saint Pan-cree-ass comes to mind.
Amuses me when the on board staff give it a shot though.
London Saint Pan-cree-ass comes to mind.
omnicity4659
Member
- Joined
- 25 Sep 2017
- Messages
- 190
Was on a 158 last night and it had a myriad of different voices.
There’s an announcement that says “Thank you for travelling with Northern today, we hope you have a pleasant onward journey”, different male voice which I assume is David, this has been used for a while across the fleet at when arriving into termini.
The same voice was saying “This is”, “Ashington” and a new announcement advising passengers to have their tickets ready for inspection, whilst Peter said everything else. Only a slight mess…
There’s an announcement that says “Thank you for travelling with Northern today, we hope you have a pleasant onward journey”, different male voice which I assume is David, this has been used for a while across the fleet at when arriving into termini.
The same voice was saying “This is”, “Ashington” and a new announcement advising passengers to have their tickets ready for inspection, whilst Peter said everything else. Only a slight mess…
Absolutely baffled that people find it so hard to identify her accent. I've seen people refer to her as Welsh, Scottish and even Asian. She is pure geordie - I know her personally!
For what it's worth, aside from the fact that they sound like they were recorded in a large room rather than a studio (because they were), the new announcements sound fine to me. The cost of getting local celebrities in to do it would be huge - both their fees and the cost of hiring a studio/engineer for the day.
There should now be only 2 voices on the CAF fleet for 99% of hte announcements. I think there are a small handful done by a third person.
I think some people are just nitpicking to be honest. I understand why some people felt Peter lacked warmth but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with David's announcements.
David’s announcements are quite fast when reeling off the list of calling points on the CAF units, and some stations are badly cut so you get a train arriving at ‘Auldeth Road’ or ‘Anchester Oxford Road’.
I like the Geordie lady’s voice - Are we able to attribute a name to her voice?
When i first heard her i thought that she sounds more Scottish than Geordie to me! There is definitely a bit of a Scottish sound to her voice! Although after listening again i am wondering if she might originally be from the Berwick Upon Tweed area or somewhere nearby in the Northern part of Northumberland area. I have heard people from that area with a similar accent. It is not exactly a Scottish accent but also sounds different to most Geordie accents from the Newcastle area. So i can see why people think it is a Scottish voice. Who is she out of interest? I presume that she is another Northern staff member?
The issue with the David Curtis announcements is that they sound so amateur. You can tell straight away that he has no experience in voiceovers. Some of the recordings have a bit of background noise. Some of them have been cut so poorly and you can hear him breathing for half a second before he starts talking. Then the inflections are all over the place. Lots of stations are said with the wrong inflection and as a result they just sound a bit odd when reading out the calling patterns. It all sounds a bit unprofessional and cheaply done.
There is no need to hire a celebrity voice. In fact i would rather they did not as celebrities are not normally good at voiceovers. What they need is a professional voiceover artist. They had this from 2015 to 2023 when they used Trisha Jarman on all of their trains. She was perfect. So why did they replace Trisha Jarman when she had already recorded everything. All they would have to pay for is new stations and that is not that expensive. She has her own home studio to record things as do most professional voiceovers. Almost every other TOC manages to pay a professional voiceover artist. They could sort out this mess by just bringing back Trisha Jarman who was an excellent voice who was liked by everyone. I am still baffled as to why they got rid of her in the first place.
I would not be surprised if this whole mess is just a personal project of David Curtis wanting to change everything for some reason. He got the job as their Onboard Systems Service Delivery Manager (basically a fancy term for PIS manager) in early March 2023 and then around three months later at the end of May 2023 and beginning of June 2023 was when Peter Corley started replaced Trisha Jarman and all this mess and constant changing of scripts and voices started. So i think it is very obvious that David Curtis is the person responsible for this mess that their PIS has turned in to. It can not just be coincidence that everything started being messed up as soon as he got the job managing the PIS on their trains.
It all comes across as so bonkers that an operator would change their announcements this much. Why after only two years did David Curtis decide to replace Peter Corley with his own voice. If there is an issue with or a dislike of the Peter Corley announcements then surely the sensible thing would be to revert back to the Trisha Jarman announcements which should never have been replaced. It is so noticeable when i travel on Northern that their announcements are such poorer quality than other TOCs announcements. It might not seem like the biggest issue but having good quality announcements leves a better impression with passengers.