This was in the Times today:

One's train is about to leave from Platform 5

By Alan Hamilton

THE worst form of communication invented by man has been made even less intelligble by the intervention of brandsmiths.

Brandsmiths are highly paid people who dream up swanky corporate names for humble enterprises. When four train operating companies serving East Anglia merged, the brandsmiths had a flash of inspiration; the enterprise should trade under the brand name One.

It has not worked. Smoke signals and jungle drums are models of clarity compared with the railway station announcement. The age that has produced the 3G mobile telephone still cannot talk with clarity to long-suffering commuters scurrying through echoing Victorian train sheds.

Announcements used to refer, for example, to the 7.20 Great Eastern service to Norwich. Recently they have been referring to the 7.20 One service to Norwich. Passengers have been bamboozled; were they referring to the 7.20 One service, or the 7.21 service, which is a minute adrift? After passengers complained, announcers will drop the name and say simply: The 7.20 to Norwich is leaving.

In the railway age of privatised unpunctuality, a minute either way would seem not to matter. A One spokeswoman said, however, that, although she knew of no one missing a train as a result of the confusion, there had been negative feedback. We did employ brandsmiths and consulted with customers and staff before deciding on the name One for the new company, she said.

The operator, formed from a merger of Anglian Railways, Great Eastern, West Anglia and Stansted Express, is registered as London Eastern Railways. The name was clearly not catchy enough, given that there is already a train and bus operator known as First, and mobile phone company called 02. The problem never arose in the straightforward days of British Rail.

If any railway enterprise is to be known as One, it should be the Royal Train. But as one always knows where one is going, one does not really need an announcement, does one?