Use of "rail speak" to passengers

At least the driver did not say "You will be tipped out at Woodford>'

Correct - it will always be the same, as long as there is left hand running, which there is on the Hainault loop.

It wouldnae work... because, say you're heading roughly north ex Woodford, by Roding Valley you'd be eastbound, and by Grange Hill, that'd become Southbound!!!

Mind you, these oddities exist quite innocently elsewhere on the network!

In simple terms - if you think of a loop with double track, the inner rail is the track inside the loop, and the outer rail the one to the outside.

also on a simlar theme, whos crazy idea was it that when im on a main line station all announcements go thus,

"next train at platform 4 is all stations to LONDON Liverpool street" or LONDON fenchurch street and so on

where else is there a liverpool street or fenchurch street

apart from of course victoria which is also in southend

And Manchester!

And former stations in Sheffield, Nottingham, Swansea and probably elsewhere.

In my recollection the use of LONDON Waterloo say began years ago, with signage change. I can imagine that it was for the benefit of passengers who just wanted to get to...London. And not Waterloo, Liverpool?Now the trains that go past about 100 yards away say LONDON WATERLOO on the LED displays. Trains to Charing X of course also stop at London Waterloo East. However, I have to say that in Southampton Central, not Parkway (and not to be confused of course with Southampton Terminus, which is now a Casino and block of apartments), you can in theory catch a Southern train to London Bridge, as well as London Victoria. So I suppose it makes sense. But then you always will get punters going to the wrong place, like the couple who booked flights to 'Sydney', and ended up in Nova Scotia, not New South Wales!

In particular, note that there are trains from Cambridge to both London Liverpool Street and Liverpool Lime Street. The station staff go to great lengths to ensure that they clarify requests from anyone being ambiguous. Amaerican tourists always seem to talk about "Liverpool Station".

Unfortunately they can't just abbreviate destinations to either London or Liverpool either as the fast service to London goes to King's Cross.

In Miami they use both terminologies. The inner loop operates a circular service clockwise while the outer loop is served by trains to and from the branches that go round it anti-clockwise. map here.

You might be thinking of the Detroit People Mover, which is circular single track and only goes in one direction (currently clockwise).