On Apr 2, 4:28*pm, Owain wrote:
On Apr 2, 2:43*pm, wrote:

Would you know if the British railway system ever had radio phones for
use by passengers as premier American trains did?

Yes, but not terribly widespread, and not used very much because of
the cost of calls.

They were introduced at about the same time that the original analogue
cellular 'phones were starting to become generally available, but not
many people had them. The ones I saw, on the 125 mph Diesel High
Speed Trains, probably around the early to mid '80s took only BT
Phonecards, not cash. Reception was rather poor at that time in many
areas.

Also, at one time almost every US train station had a payphone, but
they are rare to find now. *Some stations still have them mostly to
serve as an emergency phone (no charge to call police), though of
course one can still make a normal call. *Overall, pay phones have
become rather rare in the US thanks to cell phones, and cheaper phone
rates.

Do British railway stations still have pay phones?

Many do, including some surprisingly small unstaffed ones. Many
railway stations now also have CCTV and help point speakerphones to
contact the CCTV operator for assistance or to obtain train times.
CCTV operators can also make announcements to unstaffed stations over
'long line public address' in the event of service disruption or to
challenge vandals etc.

Owain

On some stations there's a railway 'phone in a metal box, with a
notice saying that it can be used by passengers to contact the
signaller to obtain information about train running. I've seen these
at stations on the Settle-Carlisle line, which runs through some very
remote areas for example.

There are still a surprising number of BT telephone kiosks around in
the street, despite the fact that they seem to get very little use
these days.