Before V2.3, AirLink used to share the same announcer, Justine Harris, with Stepford Express. However, this was changed in the large update V2.3 with Tanya Rich taking part as the announcer for Stepford Express instead, raising large controversy for her new announcements for Stepford Express, and became the most controversial announcers in SCR.
ABOUT TANYA
Tanya is a professional voice with 40 years of experience. She works regularly in all shades of this accent. Working in every medium, she can be heard on radio stations both here and abroad, TV commercials in the UK and USA, on 100’s of on- hold and IVR systems, corporate /explainers, in the BT Lift, on the new Avanti trains, on animations, gaming , audio drama, greetings cards, ,waxworks, gaming machines and fairground rides! She is very experienced in all aspects of E-Learning, from EFL to Health and Safety.
TANYA’S STEPFORD REPUTATION
However, Tanya’s reputation is not so strong in the community. The new Stepford Express announcements were voiced by Tanya, which the community thought the new announcements were terrible, which lead to it being turned down harshly. The new Express announcements quickly raised controversy among the community.
u/Gabe-The-Noob-9928 on Reddit says:
“I mean, they’re alright, but I’ve sometimes wondered why they couldn’t just keep the pre-v2.3 Express announcements and change the Airlink ones instead.”
[TD] Robloxian48596 says:
“Whoever changed the old express announcer needs to be fired, pure noise.”
[GD] 4taako says:
“the new express announcer is just ew”
You get the point.
WHY?
Tanya’s announcements was mixed with a terrible combination of sound quality, and a lack of emotions.
On top of that, Stepford Express is heavily based on Avanti West Coast in real life, which the announcer happens to be Tanya. So to keep it realistic, Express’ announcer might have been changed to be similar to AWC despite the fact that Express is also heavily based on LNER, and it would have arguably been better to change the AirLink announcer instead.
CONCLUSION
We can conclude that this decision was a weird step towards realism, and the voice actor’s empathy towards announcing for Stepford Express wasn’t the highest. Although Tanya is an experienced voice actor, in this case, she didn’t seem to put as much effort into her announcements as irl for SCR.
