The train, the train

At busy London termini, the trains come in and cleaners jump straight on board and so they won’t tell you earlier which train will depart to xyz because they can’t whilst the train is still being prepared. You will notice that with all the trains coming and going, they have to be pretty slick about it and doing turnarounds as they can’t have trains coming into London and no platforms available for them.

Conductors/train managers do come around checking tickets so it was just chance that not in your case.

The tracks are owned by the government who have an organisation called Network Rail to maintain the system. Passenger trains take priority and freight trains must pull into passing loops so that passenger trains can overtake - although on some routes, 4 tracks exist to account for the different speeds of trains. Freight can also be moved about at night when most passenger trains are in depots getting serviced.

On some routes, 1st Class passengers can have meals at seat for an additional fee..

Hopefully your new California high speed line is progressing well and US citizens will eventually be able to move around in a green and swift way.

If you are interested in train travel, this guy has several You Tube videos of different places in the world:>https://www.youtube.com/@SuperalbsTravels

This video explains why the US has not kept pace with other advanced countries regarding train travel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhb0-iXrsWc

Fun fact- there are 334 railway stations and 270 Underground (Tube) stations in London.

Whether you see anyone on the train or not there will be a train manager on the train, so there will always be someone to speak to if you need to.

There are lots of times when I don't show my ticket when boarding or getting off and the train manager doesn't come and check either. It happened last week when a broken down freight train meant that our train from London back to Preston was over 2 hours late. We never showed our tickets to anyone yet were able very swiftly to get all our money back online, including the first half of the return ticket to London which wasn't late.

As Rick notes, London has a LOT of train stations - I thought Paris took that prize but no. So make doubly sure you're looking at the right station and then going to the right station.

The major London train termini - Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Liverpool Street, Charing Cross, Waterloo, Victoria etc - operate on a kind of radial system, circling the centre of London with lines radiating out. It avoids lots of lines crossing central London.

So Paddington, the furthest west, offers trains to the West of England. Euston for the NW, Kings Cross to the NE etc.

Although I’ve never quite understood why Waterloo serves the central South while Victoria, which is further west in London, tends to have trains going to the SE but I’m sure someone will explain.

We could get buried in History with the London Termini which benefits no one here, but the very short version is that Waterloo was built as a temporary terminus of the London and South Western Railway (the original one in the 19th century).
Hence its routes went mainly west.
Originally the LSWR line was to go further into the City, but that never happened. Ultimately that role was filled by the Waterloo and City railway (aka the Drain).
The LSWR extended far into Cornwall past Plymouth for Holiday Express trains as far as Bude and Boat trains to Plymouth docks for Liner traffic as well as Southampton Docks and Weymouth for the Channel Islands.
Because in the 3rd quarter of the 20th century the South Western division became part of Network South East railcards are still not valid on that route from Exeter until the off peak at 0930- London fare rules. Unlike GWR.
In Network South East days there were through trains beyond the current western terminus of Exeter to Plymouth and Paignton (on the English Riviera) both of which I have used. I still often use Waterloo to Exeter trains for their far cheaper fares than the faster GWR trains.
For a time there was even a strange London Waterloo to Glasgow train routed on the South Western route as far as Reading, then through Oxford etc on its way north via the Lake District. There was also a Glasgow to Paddington train until quite recently.

...for some reason the station won't tell you what platform your train is at until about 10 minutes before departure.

It's been my experience going through Euston and Paddington that I can pull up departures on the stations' websites and see the assigned platform posted, before the platform gets posted on the departure boards in the hall.

There are several rail companies in the UK but seem to share the same
tickets. Which is odd but helpful,

That is in fact not odd, but how it is supposed to be. For the passenger it should all be just "the train system", and you should not have to care about such details as to where the train driver's pay check comes from.

I also got a chuckle from your remark on how the trains were "long". One persistent problem the UK has is overcrowding, because the infrastructure does not permit to run the kinds of long trains we see on the continent.

The turnstiles are a misfeature. The moment a railway makes you queue they are a failure.

I thought the reason they don't post the departure tracks too far in advance, was that they didn't want people to board the wrong train. The tracks can have multiple trains using the same track within a short period of time, and an eager passenger could easily board the wrong one.

At stations that are not termini, trains will be coming and going from various platforms and people are usually told via screens which platform their train will be going from well in advance. On the platforms, electronic signs will say next train will be for (name of final destination) calling at xyz. 2nd train for **** and sometimes even a third departure from the same platform is listed.

If you click the following link and a busy ‘through station’ such as Bristol Parkway and then ‘Browser View’ - you can see all the trains coming and going and if they are on time and the allocated platform and the train company. (Obviously, if you are in America and click in the middle of the British night, few trains will be running). https://tiger.worldline.global/home

I love trains!! Brings back a lot of childhood memories (I didn't grow up in the US).

We experienced a few instances of getting on to the wrong carriages on the right trains. On the train from Southampton to Wareham, we got on to the wrong end of the train that was going to be decoupled at Bournemouth. But we listened to/read the announcements and managed to get to the right end before that happened. This would also have happened at Salisbury, but the SWR staff were vigilant and made sure we got on to the right end.

Split ticketing saves a lot of money, but it is complicated. I don't think I could have managed without Stuart and others on this forum.

We did have ticket checkers come and check our tickets a few times - not every journey.

The "see it, say it, sorted" announcements came with a phone number to call, as far as I remember.

If you want to keep your railway ticket as a souvenir, at the turnstile let a guard know (there is almost always someone there) and they will scan your ticket and let you out.

It's been my experience going through Euston and Paddington that I can pull up departures on the stations' websites and see the assigned platform posted, before the platform gets posted on the departure boards in the hall.

Use the realtimetrains site for platform information before the boards show it.

James, swiftly is not a word used when dealing with government entities.

Completion of Speed Rail for the late, great state of California is at least a decade away.

To Wengen, yes you might think it normal that one train is the same as another and all tickets work everywhere. But in Japan for instance there are many train companies and they don't play well together. Also in Austria, on Westbahn trains there are announcements reminding passengers that OBB tickets and Eurailpasses (and sometimes DB tickets) are not going to be accepted.

I'm reminded after watching a British train video yesterday that British ticket prices are some of the highest in the world, especially for last minute bookings. If you think you're going to do more than one train trip you should really get a Two Together card; do this before you go since it requires access to a good computer and the ability to cut/copy/paste photos onto the card. My two trips were last minute so I just walked up to a human (the lines weren't too bad) and asked for a cheap day return (I guess perhaps that wording is archaic but hey so am I). I flashed the pass on my phone and they didn't bother to scan it.

Be aware that if you want to buy tickets online your Google search will turn up a LOT of websites just dying to sell them to you, look carefully at the domain name and the name of the seller and decide who you want to use. It seems like people have their faves, as does the Man in Seat 61.

Someone mentioned train videos, if this sounds like fun to you some recommended vloggers are Thibault at Simply Railway, Superalbs, Nonstop Eurotrip, Steve Marsh and of course the Man in Seat 61. Once you start watching Youtube will be glad to start suggesting more to you.

You can equally well buy a physical Two Together (or any other Railcard) at any staffed station, and travel with it's benefit immediately. It is the same price.
All stations should have the relevant application forms- even my local staffed stations in the back of beyond have the forms, and will be very happy to issue them so a major London Terminal will.

Yes I did notice that the bigger stations had photo booths, I guess for that purpose

the photo booths have been on stations a lot longer than the Two Together Railcard. Howard and Marina in Last of the Summer Wine were in a photo booth on Huddersfield station in the 1990s.

They were always advertised as for passport photos (also for driving licences and all around fun).

Yeah this drives me a bit crazy. I guess we have the same thing here but it has never seemed as bad here as in the UK. I am sure this is some kind of bias flaw on my part !

But I have a particularly bad memory of this at Euston. In 2016, our family (parents, brother and his family, my husband and I) were all headed to Scotland to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. My brother and his family flew into our meeting spot, Glasgow, and my husband did too, but my parents and I took the train.

Of course, we started with Eurostar from Paris to St Pancras, and then headed over to Euston for the train to Glasgow.

Just as you said, there was a huge crowd at Euston waiting for trains, and for the train to Glasgow. They posted the track number quite late, and we headed for the platform. As we got along the train, that's when I realized that our car was waaaaaaay down the train. And my parents can not walk briskly, much less fast. As we kept walking in the effort to get to our car, I started to worry that we were not going to be able to reach our car before the train took off. The idea came to me to board on another car and work our way forward through the cars but I thought we wouldn't do very well trying to needle our way through with our luggage, and especially worried that the train would break up into constituent parts or had an engine in the middle or something. So we kept plugging away — I would get a bit ahead and then hang up to wait for them, all of our anxiety growing the entire stressful time.

Ultimately we did make it - but I never had wished so much for a car towards the closer end of the train. I can still feel anxious thinking about that day !! How I wished we had been able to make our way down the platform slowly and await the train in the area we needed to be to board.

I don't want to make excuses for the scrum at Euston waiting for a train to be called, I'd just like to mention a few of the reasons that a train may not be called early, using the experience of my many years of working trains in and out of Euston.

Most platforms are actually 2 platforms, one on each side. Your train would be on one side and another, or several on the other. Staff don't want to call the train when the opposite one is boarding so that people don't wind up on the wrong train. Sometimes a train will be made up of multiple units of 4 cars each, and be divided. So a 12 car comes in and goes back out as 3 4 car trains or a 4 and an 8. You have to walk past the still locked up units to get to the one at the front. Opening a train on the adjacent platform would only complicate things further.

Passengers may even get on the wrong type of train from the wrong company if a commuter train is on the platform shared by an intercity train. They want to go to Watford Junction to see Harry Potter and wind up on a train with first stop Stafford over an hour away.

When the train comes in it needs cleaning - cleaners work best on a locked up train on a closed platform.

Trains are usually locked for security and need a member of train crew to unlock them - platform staff are not allowed to do that - and rather than people pushing and banging door buttons on doors which don't open, they are better kept on the main floor until the crew arrive, which may not be long before the train departs if they are late or on a break.

And there are other operational reasons like a train swap and several others.

Disabled passengers being assisted are often boarded first for their safety.

So, yes, even I get frustrated waiting up on the concourse, but there are usually good reasons.

Kim - your case is exactly what the assistance service is for. Had you booked it in advance you could have had a leisurely ride up to your carriage rather than a rushed walk.

Johnew52 is exactly right