Query about old BR station signs

Depends whether it's at ELY or LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWRNDROBWLLLLANTISILIOGOGOGOCH.

"MartinS"

Havant a clue.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

Would anyone care to give an ignorant foreigner a suggestion regarding how that name is pronounced (the second one - I'll guess at ELY ;-) I guess there's some sort of code, like "LL" equalling "F" or something.

Regards, Greg.P.

"Ely" is Eely, not Ee-lye or Elly.

Take a look at:

Or go to this one and follow some of the links:

BTW I got one letter wrong in my original spelling.

Good thing you're not a rivet counter, it's Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch I want to know how to pronounce ;-)

Confirmed. I live about 8 miles from the Cambridgeshire one (there's another in South Wales, pronounced the same way).

-- Brian "posting from Sutton, winner of The English And Welsh Village Of The Year Award, 2002"

In article , Gregory Procter writes

"LL" is an "L", but sounded over and to one side of the tongue. Someone once did a PhD on which side of the mouth and the majority, including me, use the right side. "F" is a "V" sound. "W" and "Y" are vowels - otherwise there would be a run of 14 consonants

Actually it doesn't (apart possibly for Llanfair P.G. which sign was a tourist attraction in its own right).

Have a look at

and click on "Totem book" for a large number of examples (several pages are displayed). All appear to be the same size. e.g Llanfairfechan is the same length as Conway.

To answer the original question, my "Rugeley Town" specimen is 923 mm long and 257 mm high and I am sure that this will be pretty general.

Dave W.

h

Try :

Isn't it!

No it isnt! "Fair" (soft mutation of "Mair", meaning Mary) is not pronounced like the English word "fair".

"Eric R Zadro" wrote

A standard station totem is approximately 36.5" x 10" - just measured one.

Other enamel signs varied in size.

John.

Thanks for that - I've always wondered about it!

David (not welsh).

So the one John measured is virtually the same as mine at 923mm long X 257mm high, thus confirming a standard size for totems.

Dave W.

They varied the size of the font to accomodate longer place names.

(Probably about 6 po>

What I meant by 'width', was the height And the 'sign' I meant was those big ones which were placed upon platforms to announce the name of the station. Thankyou to John and Dave for providing me with the totem height. can anyone enlighten me as to the other measurement?

"Eric R Zadro" <

Ah. "Running In" signs.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

In message , John Bishop writes

Not 14, since LL counts as a single letter, as does CH.

(Other languages also use 2 glyphs to represent single letters, for example Spanish)

"Eric R Zadro" wrote

The big signs, known as running in boards, varied in size enormously depending upon location. Some were as long as 30', others little more than two or three feet.

John.

There were also the ones on the approaches to big stations, bearing the name and an arrow underheath with the legend "xxx Yards". Stafford No. 5 signal box still has such a sign, in LMR maroon, whilst Euston has one in the later corporate BR style reading "