Recently, I went by train to Hamburg, I do this quite often, but this time I am on holiday and so I had the time to take some notes on the inadequacy of its signs and other ways to communicate.

First, it is almost impossible to find the section labels. In Germany they are labeled with uppercase letters, like A, B, C, D, E and F. In Hamburg most of these signs are either not visible due to concrete columns or they are behind other signs or pieces of installation. It would be much easier to a) draw them on the ground and b) place the signs next to signs showing which train will stop next on the platform.

Second, you cannot see a clock from every position, which sucks. And the you cannot understand the announcements. In addition, when my train was announced on the electronic display for the platform, the destination shown was Zürich HB. I wanted to go to Paris! Not Zürich for god sake. The displayed train number was 479. My ticket showed the number 40479. As I am a most clever man, I already consulted the car position indicator and found out the my train has multiple numbers and the one on my ticket was the number of the train part going to Paris. Still, a lot of people got confused. Therefore, I propose to display all destinations on the sign including all numbers. I know that this is possible. They did something similar in Hanover. And as they use most likely the same technology in both train stations, this should be easy to fix.