Rant - train conductors/guards

prettywowers

The level of ignorance in this thread is staggering.

For those wanting a guard to be replaced by a "customer service operative" - the bit you don't get is that if the replacement operative isn't available, the train will run without them.

Then what happens if you have a heart attack? The driver ain't coming back to deal with you, so you'd better hope that one of your fellow passengers knows CPR.

What about the passengers in wheelchairs? Do they just hope someone will help them on/off?

What about the scumbags running about threatening people? Who'll deal with them? Fellow passengers? The transport police (who, incidentally, only have 10 officers on duty in the whole south of England, and the closest one is 150 miles away).

Just because driver only works on some routes does not in any way mean that it will work everywhere.

Hasbeen

yorkie2 wrote: »

Absolutely Driver Only Operation is safe; anyone who claims it isn't is going against the RSSB, who clearly know best, and therefore you can take anything they say with a pinch of salt.



It's far safer to be on a DOO train than almost any other mode of land-based transport!

And you were doing so well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-48936731

Pennywise

silverwhistle wrote: »

the guard was absolutely vital in helping deal with the situation and organising the back up train

As if he actually organised any of that. It would all be done by the control room, who'd have been in constant contact with the driver, signallers, response teams etc.

It's not as if the Guard would have the driver of a random relief train on speed dial!

He'll basically have helped out when the passengers were transferred to the relief train if that's what the outcome was - a member of the response team could have got on the train to do that and other things like keeping passengers informed, handing out water, etc.

Pennywise

prettywowers wrote: »

Then what happens if you have a heart attack? The driver ain't coming back to deal with you, so you'd better hope that one of your fellow passengers knows CPR.

Guards aren't routinely trained in CPR. We had a fatality on a train near us where the train stopped, but staff didn't actually do anything other than making comfortable etc until the paramedics arrived, by which time it was too late.

K80_Black

Pennywise wrote: »

Guards aren't routinely trained in CPR. We had a fatality on a train near us where the train stopped, but staff didn't actually do anything other than making comfortable etc until the paramedics arrived, by which time it was too late.

I was a train ticket inspector, with no medical training aside from a St Johns Ambulance course when I was a Girl Guide. I still did my best when a drunk woman passed out, smashing her face into a wine glass. (Mostly getting her off the train and to the ambulance I called for her, but still. The passengers around her ignored her. I wasn't even alerted.)

As for scumbags running around threatening people - I had to 'detain' a very drunk, very rowdy passenger in an empty first class section as he was swearing at kids. During this time he tried to sexually assault me. Thankfully passed him off to the BTP, but that was probably the worst 40 minutes or so of my time on the trains.

During the Tottenham riots, who was standing outside Tottenham Hale station to ensure everyone was safe? Oh yeah, that'd be me too.

I don't think DOO trains are safe - even though I was mostly 'customer service', in these kinds of situations I was far better than nothing. And yes, when I was ill or missed my connections, the trains ran without me. Usually without incident, but when there's an incident, you want a person in a uniform who knows what to do - or at least who to call to find out.

Kite2010

prettywowers wrote: »

The level of ignorance in this thread is staggering.

For those wanting a guard to be replaced by a "customer service operative" - the bit you don't get is that if the replacement operative isn't available, the train will run without them.

Then what happens if you have a heart attack? The driver ain't coming back to deal with you, so you'd better hope that one of your fellow passengers knows CPR.

What about the passengers in wheelchairs? Do they just hope someone will help them on/off?

What about the scumbags running about threatening people? Who'll deal with them? Fellow passengers? The transport police (who, incidentally, only have 10 officers on duty in the whole south of England, and the closest one is 150 miles away).

Just because driver only works on some routes does not in any way mean that it will work everywhere.

Probably not the guard, all they will do is try and make contact with the police to meet at the next station, they won't put themselves in harms way if there is an idiot running around with a knife. Some guards do a good disappearing act on those late evening services with drunks on board causing hassle to other passengers



Or the guard not knowing about things happening when the service is run with 2 units without gangways and they are in the other unit

jimbo6977

"Guards" or whatever they are called these days don't even know when ticket offices are open and which stations have ticket machines on the routes they are operating.

One of them on Saturday afternoon was insistent my local station had both a ticket office (it does but it only opens in the morning) and a machine (it ought to have but despite all the first-fix being in place to install one, it has never seen the light of day).

On this false basis he felt unable to sell me a cheap day return and insisted I pay the full return fare. At least he had the good grace to relent when I showed him the station information on the National Rail website.

Loanranger

Ah yes, once Corby gets into Number Ten we can all look forward to returning to the bad old days of British Rail.



Such a pity that many people who like the idea of renationalising the railway are too young to have experienced the worst of it. Late running, squalid trains, gross under investment, crashes, strikes. The bully boy unions want nothing more than to be in charge once again just as the Labour governments of the 70s allowed them to be. No wonder the country voted in Margaret Thatcher in 1979.



Don't forget that Railtrack was put into administration, not because it was insolvent because it wasn't, but because the newly re- elected Labour goverenment had a political agenda. Also, don't forget that thousands of drivers and other rail staff bought shares in Railtrack, they all being capitalists when it suited them.

Privatisation has been the best catalyst for safety and for capital investment in all the privatised industries. It's only the unions who think otherwise and who promote half truths and left wing group think,

Voyager2002

Loanranger wrote: »

Ah yes, once Corby gets into Number Ten we can all look forward to returning to the bad old days of British Rail.

SNIP

Judging by your ideas of what went on in the past, you must be all of 12 years old. I used the railways A LOT from the mid-1970s onwards, first for travel between home and university (London and Durham), then for extensive business travel throughout the 1980s. Yes, there were real problems back then, but as nothing to what I have suffered on the trains over the last five years. And in fact people a little older than me complained like anything that BR in the 1970s and 1980s was very much worse than it had been in the 1960s and earlier (remember, nationalisation was in the 1940s).

stragglebod

Loanranger wrote: »

Ah yes, once Corby gets into Number Ten we can all look forward to returning to the bad old days of British Rail.

Such a pity that many people who like the idea of renationalising the railway are too young to have experienced the worst of it. Late running, squalid trains, gross under investment, crashes, strikes. The bully boy unions want nothing more than to be in charge once again just as the Labour governments of the 70s allowed them to be. No wonder the country voted in Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Don't forget that Railtrack was put into administration, not because it was insolvent because it wasn't, but because the newly re- elected Labour goverenment had a political agenda. Also, don't forget that thousands of drivers and other rail staff bought shares in Railtrack, they all being capitalists when it suited them.

Privatisation has been the best catalyst for safety and for capital investment in all the privatised industries. It's only the unions who think otherwise and who promote half truths and left wing group think,

Even the person who's currently reviewing privatisation on behalf of the DfT - a former chief exec of BA and a cheerleader for free market privatisation - says there are no benefits from rail privatisation.

I'm also not convinced you understand Labour's policies on rail privatisation. If learning the name of the party's leader is too complicated a task for you to achieve, you probably want to scale back your intellectual ambitions.