 |
| In a very short space of time, a new grammatical irritation has gripped radio, television and the press in general — ‘train station’. Even the BBC has fallen for it. |
| A ‘station’ is a stopping point, a base or focal point, for people (members of staff and so on) or a centralized part of a particular infrastructure. Hence fireman and their equipment are based at a fire station. The fire does not congregate or meet there; a fire station is not somewhere one goes to get a fire. |
| Ambulance station, police station: they are for the ambulances and the ambulance staff, or for the police and their equipment. Bus station: where busman book on and off or a place to have as their base — they are ‘stationed’ there. In the army, one is ‘stationed’ at such-and-such barracks. It is the place of belonging for the staff and/or equipment associated with that place. |
| At the Boat Race, Oxford may end up at the Surrey Station — it is place at which they find themselves. It is not a station for Surreys. |
| A railway station is a point on the railway where staff work — a congregating point for the operations of the railway, a place to which passengers (not ‘customers’) come to join or leave the infrastructure of the railway. In literal terms, a ‘train station’ would be the point (on a train) where staff and the like might be based. |
| The root of the word ‘station’ is almost certainly the same as that for ‘status’, meaning a fixed point of reference — something static, in time or location, hence: statue, status quo, statute, statement, stationary and so on. |
| ‘Train station’ is illiterate in the form that has become common usage in recent years and does not convey the meaning that is implied by most perpetrators of the expression. |
| I am no grammarian nor etymologist, but this recent fad is ignorant - unintelligently used by uninformed commentators who think they are somehow ‘correcting’ an obvious error. After all, buses serve a bus station, so trains must serve a train station. Wrong. |
| |
 |
