next station vs next stop

[uworissimo]

Hello everyone,

While riding the metro in Hamburg, Germany, I recognized that the announcement went "next station, [name of metro station]."
I've already heard announcements that used the word 'stop' instead of 'station.'

I was wondering whether there was a genuine difference between the two, i.e. whether one refers to train stations whereas the other one is more commonly used with bus stops. Maybe someone can shed some light on the matter by giving some examples of the aforementioned two expressions/words.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[entangledbank]

The next stop is specifically where the train will stop. Firstly, a station might be closed for repair (flooding, bomb scare, lift out of action, etc.); or secondly, it might be an express train that doesn't stop at many of the stations it passes through; or thirdly, in the country the stop might be a 'halt', a mere platform for getting on and off, without any of the other trappings of a station - no ticket office, waiting room, or turnstiles/gates. In any of these circumstances, 'next stop' is a bit clearer than 'next station'. The latter could mean "next station that we're stopping at", but it might not.

Presumably German metros are so efficient that lifts don't cause chaos by breaking down (unlike London), so the next station is invariably the next stop and vice versa.

On buses (in London) there are now recorded announcements for each stop, and sometimes you hear, 'The next bus stop is closed.' That is, it's still called a bus stop (because there's no other possible name for it), although the bus isn't going to stop there. With trains, you can distinguish stops from stations.

 

[rhitagawr]

Guards - I'm not going to call them conductors - in Britain say things like 'The next station stop will be Oxford', which sounds odd, or at least tautological, to me. I'm not going to get out of the train unless it's at a station, even if it's stopped. And I'm not interested in the stations the train doesn't stop at. I can see, however, that the next stop may be at signals rather than at a station.

 

[JulianStuart]

Maybe someone got grumpy about the train making a lot of stops that weren't at stations and complained enough so the guard's language book was altered to read that way to distinguish station stops from random stops. Probably by the same committee that authorized "arriving into Glasgow"

 

[rhitagawr]

Yes. 'Arriving into Glasgow' is ridiculous as well.

 

[Pertinax]

Guards - I'm not going to call them conductors - in Britain say things like 'The next station stop will be Oxford', which sounds odd, or at least tautological, to me. I'm not going to get out of the train unless it's at a station, even if it's stopped. And I'm not interested in the stations the train doesn't stop at. I can see, however, that the next stop may be at signals rather than at a station.

A friend of mine described a 1000-mile train trip from Brisbane to Cairns, where some drunken fellow in the next compartment actually got off (and stayed off) the train in pitch dark at a signal stop. Perhaps it was people like him suing the railways that accounts for the cautious announcement. But I suspect he was so drunk that the subtlety would have been wasted on him.