It is a problem that Northern Trains has promised to remedy - with passengers' help.
The operator recently had to re-record all of its onboard announcements so they were compatible with its new fleet of trains. With 500 station names to read out, it is perhaps inevitable that its new announcers - a conductor and cybersecurity manager by day - mangled a few.
Now, Northern has vowed to record again the names of any stops it has got wrong. On the Cumbrian side of the network, it has so far pledged to put the "e" back in Burneside (currently, wrongly, silent); put the Ass into Aspatria (currently said with too much emphasis on "spa", Northern believes); and pronounce Cark and Cartmel more casually, as local people do Cark-n-Cartmel.
In Northern's defence, the spelling of some placenames bears only the scantest resemblance to how they are pronounced by residents.
How could any stranger know, for example, that inhabitants of Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire call it "Slou-wit"? Or that Euxton Balshaw Lane in Lancashire should be pronounced "Ex-ton" and not "Euston", like its London cousin?
Irked passengers have until the end of the month to provide feedback before two Northern employees head to the studio to re-record the network's onboard announcements.
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