Recent content by reastreetmetro

One of the best ways for GBR to make an improvement to train passengers' journeys is to stop all of these ridiculous and gratuitous PA announcements by traincrew. Travelling between Coventry and Birmingham on Avanti trains is torture at times due to the rambling and overly detailed manual...

The Caledonian Sleeper will link Scotland with Birmingham from January in the biggest timetable change in 30 years, according to the overnight train's operators. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl51yj5pp1o.amp Rather exciting new opportunity for us Brummies to travel on the sleeper.

Agreed, very poor bargaining strategy from RMT indeed. More focus needed on restoring real terms pay lost since 2021 due to sub-inflation pay deals.

Can you share what these strings are please?

There are two types of PA announcements: necessary ones, and unnecessary and gratuitous ones. The gratuitous and unnecessary ones reduce the effectiveness of the necessary ones. If passengers are warned to mind the gap at each and every station, where is the warning for a station which has a...

I don't think it is a notable problem but it is a passable excuse to not bother carrying a float. I suspect there are those who think the railway system should operate led by the overarching objective of attracting people from their cars, making it a easy a possible for the potential...

As far as I am concerned passengers should be allowed to pay in cash for their ticket and should not be punished for doing so. If the station is unstaffed and the ticket machine is card-only then the conductor should be prepared to sell them a ticket. The conductor should also be carrying out...

As a guard myself and also a frequent rail traveller I take great pride in my announcements. I keep them to an absolute minimum and the ones that I do make are, in my modest opinion, polite, clear and relevant. Avanti guards are the worst offenders in the Midlands when it comes to verbal...

I've never travelled on Lumo or any other open access operator for that matter. I was quite surprised by how unpleasant the reviewer's experience was. They compared it to Ryanair but I frequently travel with them and I cannot say it resembles the Lumo experience as described here in any way at...

WMT does but it doesn't add up to much particularly on the local routes, add the fact that cross city trains stop every two to three minutes which provides very little time to issue a ticket without affecting performance. I think you'll find performance management is exactly what is missing at...

Every guard that fails to do customer service duties such as ticket checks on trains without a good reason gives those calling for DOO a little bit more ammunition. The guard is a very versatile and potentially very popular member of Railway staff but WMT management do not offer any meaningful...

Don't worry, you are right all of this is covered in training but you really need to be a sensible person and understand the limits of your powers. You want to avoid laying a finger on passengers at all costs otherwise you could be accused of assault or cause the situation to become violent...

Does anyone happen to know what these brick platform-type structures are attached to the up platforms at these two stations on the Cross City line? I was considering whether they might be the base of a signal box in the past but can't seem to discover any information that might explain what...

I feel sorry for passengers who are caught out with with the ticket collection requirement when they buy and receive 99% of their tickets online (as they are encouraged to do by TOCs). With a little imagination one can understand the potential for fraud but in general it is really poor for...

The way some drivers describe it sounds like the railway is like working down the pit I'm a guard and at our TOC we work the same shift system as drivers i.e. 4 day week, earlies followed by lates, tonnes of leave. I spent first 10 years of my working life on the buses. It's a DIFFERENT...