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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

You think that's bad, 20 years ago I was on a train from London (I forget which station) to Liverpool Lime St station, and somewhere around Nottingham — over an hour into the trip — another passenger asked me if we were going to get to Liverpool Street Station soon.

Liverpool Street Station is in London. Liverpool Lime Street is in Liverpool.

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People who land at Newark airport in New Jersey and want to use the trains to get to New York City have to figure out the difference between Newark Penn Station and New York Penn station. Must be awful for people who do not use English as their primary language.

At the Secaucus station, the two Penn Stations are in opposite directions, and I am sure many end up going the wrong way and wasting an hour.

It is also aweful who speak English as their primary language.

Source: me, wondering if I want the Bronx bound train or the Queens bound train

But you can ride all day on that token as long as you don't leave the station :P

The platform changes at Secaucus junction can be hectic even if you do know there's more than one Penn Station!

There's a Penn Station in Baltimore too. Making that mistake nowadays is less of a personal safety issue than it used to be, at least.

My wife once purchased a ticket over the phone for the Acela line from the Penn Station in New York, but they misheard it as the one in Newark. So it's even hard for Amtrak!

Something we learned out of all this was that each train company used to have their own station in each city, before things became consolidated, so it makes sense for there to be many stations for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

That's also why many cities (DC, LA, St. Louis for example) have a "Union Station": that indicates a station that was specifically built for multiple railways to have access to, hence "uniting" their tracks.

Tangent, but Conquering Gotham is an interesting history of how New York Penn Station came to be and its eventual, uh replacement, with the current structure.

Turns out, before the Pennsylvania Railroad built the tunnels under the river , you had to take a ferry from New Jersey.

I take the Amtrak from NY Penn to Baltimore Penn and back again to visit friends. The first time I was booking that route I was a bit confused.

Now you’re in Newark

Concrete jungle where dreams are smothered

There’s nothing you can do

Because you’re in Newark

I don't know if it's still the same, but from Stansted airport you had a choice of taking either the train to Liverpool St or Liverpool Lime St. Fun times for tired travellers.

Story about a man who thought he booked a flight to Sydney Australia but ended up in Sidney Montana: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/202...

The climbing guidebook I have to El Potrero Chico makes it quite clear that you are not to fly to Monterey, California instead of Monterrey, MX.

I remember reading a news item about a guy who rushed through the airport (I think LAX) to catch his flight to Oakland, ended up on a flight to Aukland instead. Realized something was wrong 4 hours later and they hadn't arrived. This was in the 1990s.

What, no passport check? Although I can see an Angeleno thinking you needed a passport to visit Northern California, understandable mistake.

To be fair, there are plenty of places in London that take more than an hour to get between. I guess the clue should have been the open fields!

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