Were train times still announced in 24 hour clock prior to automated announcements?

[HotAirBalloon]

When trains times are now announced (or even discussed in person) It's the norm to speak in 24 hour clock i.e. 'eighteen oh five' departure for an train leaving at 18:05.

Is this something that started with the introduction of automated announcements or does it go back much further than this?

 

[takno]

When trains times are now announced (or even discussed in person) It's the norm to speak in 24 hour clock i.e. 'eighteen oh five' departure for an train leaving at 18:05.

Is this something that started with the introduction of automated announcements or does it go back much further than this?

Fairly sure it's been going for my whole life, which significantly predates automated announcements. At the end of the day you'd probably want the announcements to match the printed timetables, and they are in 24h format for as long back as I've seen them.

 

[bramling]

When trains times are now announced (or even discussed in person) It's the norm to speak in 24 hour clock i.e. 'eighteen oh five' departure for an train leaving at 18:05.

Is this something that started with the introduction of automated announcements or does it go back much further than this?

I think it goes back further. Certainly it wasn't common for the time to be heard on automatic announcements until the 1990s. Most of the older automated systems simply said "platform X for the <destination> service".

Most people's experience of manual announcements will have been pretty similar - at my local station until the 2000s it was simply a gruff voice shouting a list of stations over the PA with nothing else at all!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't recall ever having heard a train in the UK not announced using the 24 hour clock. (Merseyrail timetables used to use 12-hour but back then there were no departure announcements at all)

 

[PeterC]

I don't recall ever having heard a train in the UK not announced using the 24 hour clock. (Merseyrail timetables used to use 12-hour but back then there were no departure announcements at all)

I am old enough to have used trains before the switch in 1964 but wasn't a regular user until late 1969. I certainly don't recall announcents using the 12 hour clock by then.

The change certainly made timetables a lot easier to read.

 

[Lemmy99uk]

Looking at timetable world, the 1964 North Eastern timetable is a.m./p.m. but the 1965 Western region timetable is in 24hr format.

I imagine the change to the current system was national and would include announcements as well as printed material.

 

[Dr Hoo]

As someone who commuted (to education) through Birmingham New Street in the 1960s when the change to the 24-hour clock was made as part of the Beeching reforms I recall that the switch to announcing on the new basis came in pretty quickly and consistently. (There was effectively no public address on trains or at smaller stations in those days, of course.)

When taped announcements came in there was no mention of the time(s). No scope for concatenation in those analogue days.

 

[30907]

Looking at timetable world, the 1964 North Eastern timetable is a.m./p.m. but the 1965 Western region timetable is in 24hr format.

I imagine the change to the current system was national and would include announcements as well as printed material.

The WR changed first, I think in summer 64 (reissued January 1965), but I presume this was planned as a trial run; the WR followed the then European convention where the hours were shown without an initial 0, but the national rollout standardised on the now-familiar (and now almost universal) 4-digit version.

 

[HotAirBalloon]

Thanks all that's really interesting. I'm in my late twenties so 24 hour timings and frequent station announcements are the norm for me!

A few people have said that it wasn't common for the time of departure to be announced. Is this because services were less frequent? Or is it perhaps a late 20th / 21st century fascination with time or lack there of!

At the time of the change would there been any difficulty in understanding 24 clock times?

 

[bramling]

Thanks all that's really interesting. I'm in my late twenties so 24 hour timings and frequent station announcements are the norm for me!

A few people have said that it wasn't common for the time of departure to be announced. Is this because services were less frequent? Or is it perhaps a late 20th / 21st century fascination with time or lack there of!

At the time of the change would there been any difficulty in understanding 24 clock times?

Certainly for the early automated announcement systems it would have been because it was probably too difficult to do.

As to why times tended not to be on manual announcements, I guess it simply didn’t need to be. In places with a low frequency it didn’t matter, whereas in places with a high frequency it would presumably be more important to get the train going to the right destination.

I suspect times have only been more widely used because technology has allowed them to feature on automated announcements, and no doubt in some cases due to the advent of ticketing restricted to specific trains. Had we had things like RTTT when all this started becoming a thing, I wonder if reporting numbers might have been more widely used amongst the general public than has turned out to be the case.

LU is still pretty timetable-less as far as most people are concerned, the only real exceptions being first and last train times, and a very small handful of places like Chesham where the service is less frequent. Though a few more initiated people reap rewards, for example if you commute from somewhere like Hampstead and know there’s an ex-depot train entering service there that happens to be at timings convenient to one’s commute!

 

[Lemmy99uk]

At the time of the change would there been any difficulty in understanding 24 clock times?

I dont know how easily people adapted to the change in the 60s, but you would be surprised how many people today still think 15:00 means 5pm.

 

[swt_passenger]

Thanks all that's really interesting. I'm in my late twenties so 24 hour timings and frequent station announcements are the norm for me!

A few people have said that it wasn't common for the time of departure to be announced. Is this because services were less frequent? Or is it perhaps a late 20th / 21st century fascination with time or lack there of!

At the time of the change would there been any difficulty in understanding 24 clock times?

I‘m 66 now and don’t ever remember the time changeover being mentioned as a significant issue by either my parents or grandparents...

 

[bramling]

I‘m 66 now and don’t ever remember the time changeover being mentioned as a significant issue by either my parents or grandparents...

There’s still plenty of people, of all ages, who give a blank look if one quotes a 24-hr time to them.

By contrast I find it weird if someone says “I’ll meet you at 2 o’clock”.

 

[HotAirBalloon]

Certainly for the early automated announcement systems it would have been because it was probably too difficult to do.

As to why times tended not to be on manual announcements, I guess it simply didn’t need to be. In places with a low frequency it didn’t matter, whereas in places with a high frequency it would presumably be more important to get the train going to the right destination.

I suspect times have only been more widely used because technology has allowed them to feature on automated announcements, and no doubt in some cases due to the advent of ticketing restricted to specific trains. Had we had things like RTTT when all this started becoming a thing, I wonder if reporting numbers might have been more widely used amongst the general public than has turned out to be the case.

LU is still pretty timetable-less as far as most people are concerned, the only real exceptions being first and last train times, and a very small handful of places like Chesham where the service is less frequent. Though a few more initiated people reap rewards, for example if you commute from somewhere like Hampstead and know there’s an ex-depot train entering service there that happens to be at timings convenient to one’s commute!

I do almost exclusively use trains on an advance ticket basis so perhaps I'm more attentive to departure times than a turn up and go passenger.

I vaguely remember traveling with my parents when advance tickets were large 'airline style' and the departure board would display a reference similar to a flight number and we certainly used that as a indicator as what train we were booked on compared to departure time.

 

[AY1975]

Even today there are announcers (and train conductors doing on-board announcements) who use the 12-hour clock (which rather annoys me considering that the railways have officially used the 24-hour clock for over 55 years).

 

[John Webb]

Interestingly I was given a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas which features the views of Waterloo station in 1943 and 1948 that were painted by the artist Helen McKie as part of the centenary celebrations for Waterloo in 1948. The large clock in the centre of the concourse has the extra figures for the 24 hr system already added by 1943!

 

[Western Lord]

There’s still plenty of people, of all ages, who give a blank look if one quotes a 24-hr time to them.

By contrast I find it weird if someone says “I’ll meet you at 2 o’clock”.

Really? I would find it seriously weird if somebody said that they would meet me at "fourteen hundred hours" (unless I was in the army).

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

From what I remember automated station announcements were initially a Southern Region thing before other regions took it up.
I would guess it was in the late 70s when it started, roughly when trains with PA began with the later Mk2s and Mk3s.
It was the era of multiple, and often opposing, announcements on large Southern stations, using the same voice, which I found particularly annoying.
This would be after the introduction of the 24-hour clock in the timetables and on platform displays.
A lot of later BR practice started on the SR (like gates and ATMs, and maybe off-peak time restrictions) and then were adopted, often reluctantly, by other regions.

 

[delt1c]

I heard a story which was about a woman in the 1960’s who missed her train at Paddington and complained that the announcement said her train was 22.11 and she thought it was 20 to 11.

 

[PeterC]

I‘m 66 now and don’t ever remember the time changeover being mentioned as a significant issue by either my parents or grandparents...

Anybody who had done military service, which in that generation would have been most men and many women, woud have had no issue.

 

[swt_passenger]

Anybody who had done military service, which in that generation would have been most men and many women, woud have had no issue.

Possibly had a lot to do with it.

 

[bramling]

Really? I would find it seriously weird if somebody said that they would meet me at "fourteen hundred hours" (unless I was in the army).

It may well be the railway background, where it’s simply second nature. Whilst it’s one thing not being routinely used to it, I find it surprising some people don’t know it at all.

 

[ta-toget]

Anybody who had done military service, which in that generation would have been most men and many women, woud have had no issue.

Even Captain Mainwaring?

 

[Gloster]

The YouTube video of The Members’ Sound of the Suburbs (undated, but probably ca. 1979) has, part way through, a background sound effect of what appears to be a genuine announcement from Staines. It sounds as though only the stations are given, but no times of departure. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell as ‘I can’t hear the words’.

 

[etr221]

The 24 hour clock was adopted by the British Army, on the Western Front. on 1 October 1918 (as an Allied standardisation measure); and in the early post war years (so c1920) there was a proposal that it be adopted generally in this country - there is the report of the committee that considered it on line somewhere. Interesting that the two groups consulted, as being affected by it (because 'precise' timings mattered to them) were the railways and the Post Office, as broadcasting was yet to come. It includes comments about European countries that had already adopted (Italy I think was the first) - the French did so not long before the war, and there is a coment about it not having affected the peasantry 'who didn't pay much attention to time anyway'. But unfortunately it was allowed to die a death then...

 

[hexagon789]

The WR changed first, I think in summer 64 (reissued January 1965), but I presume this was planned as a trial run; the WR followed the then European convention where the hours were shown without an initial 0, but the national rollout standardised on the now-familiar (and now almost universal) 4-digit version.

That sounds right, the Scottish Region made the change concurrent with the Summer 1965 timetable change.

I would guess it was in the late 70s when it started, roughly when trains with PA began with the later Mk2s and Mk3s.

I think the Mk2D were the first, they had a tape cassette system that was supposed to make pre-recorded announcements at specific points based on counting axle rotation but it wasn't perfect and I believe manual announcements often had to be made instead. I don't think it became a regular thing until a bit later though.

 

[Western Lord]

The 24 hour clock was adopted by the British Army, on the Western Front. on 1 October 1918 (as an Allied standardisation measure); and in the early post war years (so c1920) there was a proposal that it be adopted generally in this country - there is the report of the committee that considered it on line somewhere. Interesting that the two groups consulted, as being affected by it (because 'precise' timings mattered to them) were the railways and the Post Office, as broadcasting was yet to come. It includes comments about European countries that had already adopted (Italy I think was the first) - the French did so not long before the war, and there is a coment about it not having affected the peasantry 'who didn't pay much attention to time anyway'. But unfortunately it was allowed to die a death then...

Whenever and however the 24 hour clock may have been adopted by various bodies, it has never been in general conversational usage, there's a reason that we do not have on television the 18.00 news or the News at 22.00, and you will not hear on the hourly radio news bulletins "here is the news at 15.00" etc.

 

[etr221]

Whenever and however the 24 hour clock may have been adopted by various bodies, it has never been in general conversational usage, there's a reason that we do not have on television the 18.00 news or the News at 22.00, and you will not hear on the hourly radio news bulletins "here is the news at 15.00" etc.

I think it is perhaps broadcasting that - to a large extent - brought 'precise' times into everyday conversational use, in a way that perhaps they hadn't before; and that, had the proposal of 1919-20 come about, and broadcasting been using the twenty four hour clock , the News being in the schedule at 18:00, then we would be talking about the news at 18, or whenever, and using the 24 hour clock in everyday use.

A case of we don't because we don't, but if we did, we would.

 

[Graham S]

Prior to early 60s working time tables were laid out with am times with a dot Between the hours eg 8.00 and a forward slash for pm eg 8/00. Can't remembe what public time tables were. Looking at a Bradshaws the times were refered to as morning or afternoon with just a space between the hours and minutes eg morning 8 0 or 8 00 or afternoon 8/00. I know many a time people looking at timtables got am and pm times mixed up. Graham.