Telegraph.co.uk > Telegraph Blogs > UK Correspondents > Christopher Howse
Railway station versus train station
When did we started saying train station instead of railway station.
"I'm sitting in the railway station," sang Paul Simon, inspired, some say by Widnes. Others say he was waiting at the now disused Ditton station, on the Cheshire-Lancashire border.
And if it comes to that, the photograph for the sleeve for Some Might Say, Oasis's first No 1, was taken at Cromford railway station, Derbyshire.
But this is not quite the point at issue. On train station versus railway station, a friendly internet dictionary [
http://www.wordreference.com] gives railway station as the English for gare, but also gives train stop. It gives estacion de ferrocarril for both railway station and railroad station.
Railroad station used to be common in Britain, as anyone who has read Trollope knows. It is never used now in British English, but train station is definitely becoming the preferred form over railway station.
Why should this be? British Railways was the name of the network after nationalisation in 1948. In 1968 the name was changed to British Rail. The arrowed logo was retained for National Rail (the brand name of the Association of Train Operating Companies) after privatisation in 1993. The tracks were run first by Railtrack, which was effectively confiscated from its shareholders by the Government in 2002,
All these names seem to privilege rail above train. But if you want to look up in the book the telephone number for timetable enquiries, you'll find it under "Train Times". I suspect that train station is reinforced by the parallel form bus station. Some towns have even got the idea of building one near the other for ease of travel. Others still reject this arrangement in favour of a character-building walk.
A complicating factor is onboard announcements of the next station stop. Bookshops suffer a perennial confusion over Robert Byron's book about monastic life in Greece called The Station. It is often shelved under transport.