In relation to staffing and their attitude, FCC are so desperate to save money that staff moral is at rock bottom. Staff don't care-and why should we when the company very obviously doesn't.
People have impossible jobs-the company put as few staff on doing more than practice. Take the station dispatcher at WGC for example- he dispatches all trains on platforms 3&4. In the peak and at weekends the southbound stopper and northbound mainline stopper run within minutes of each other. If the northbound is a minute or 2 late then the dispatcher can't dispatch both it and the southbound at once so they both end up going late.
In disruption very little information is fed down to front line staff and what is often changed so what you have just told a passenger will be incorrect 5 mins later so you then look stupid when they come back up to you asking why you lied to them. It is FCCs biggest weakness but as a driver I have ended up on hold for upto 2mims during disruption trying to find out if my train is running.
With drivers the work is getting to the impractical point. There are inner suburban jobs on the GN with 5 hours in the chair, no toilet breaks, absolutely minimum 20min breaks, 5 min turn arounds combined with overcrowding and very poor dispatch equipment so trains will run late weather because the driver can't see if doors are clear, the pan takes a little while to go up/down at Drayton park or because the human being at the front needs a wee after 3 hours and so pops to the loo when changing ends which can't be done in the given 5 mins.
And I know I will get shouted down for this and I know it's a 2 way street but the attitude of staff has a lot to do with the completely moral-less passengers on the routes. Thameslink is worse but the GN can be just as bad. I have never had people being as rude to me as I have on FCC. Passengers in the past have sworn at me, made snide remarks under their breath and even personal insults about appearance etc. which is unacceptable and uncalled for. It's not my fault that the train is late or cancelled. It's also not my fault that the timetable doesn't suit you and my train dosnt stop at your station even if you have been waiting 20mins for a train. If people speak to me in the way that many do then sorry but I'm not going to be particularly helpful in my reply and I make no apology for that. If people spoke to police officers in the way they speak to us they would be arrested!
In general though FCC has a rough deal. The line and stock is taking a lot longer to 'improve' or modernise than was planned and in the meantime no one will spend money as change is just around the corner. There is no point installing PIDs and air on on 319s etc as new trains are on the way. If First lost the franchise tomorrow and someone else-even virgin-took over then absolutely nothing would change. The infrastructure and trains would still breakdown, fatalitys would still happen, there would still be occasional driver shortages, there would still be congestion and overcrowding and fares would still be as high.
Sorry to hear of your troubles, A-driver. One group of people on FCC who always seem to be doing their best are the drivers. Can't say that I've ever met an unhelpful one and as a general rule I am conscious that thy are trying to be as helpful as they can when making an announcement to their passengers, even though at times its clear that they haven't been able to find out what's going on.
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After an hour I would certainly start to think of alternatives.
Is that not logical?
Well, I'd have thought that as a rule of thumb, the longer you have waited, the sooner a train is going to arrive (in Mutant Lemming's situation, where clearly trains are running up the line through and beyond his station). That is, if there is no information to the contrary.
Arriving at a station and finding that your train isn't going to turn up due to signal failure/train failure/weather/incident etc. is one thing - just one of those things that may be a bit of a nuisance but nobody's fault. To stand on a platform for two hours, and get no information about when a train may or may not be stopping at the station you want to go, is plain infuriating. Should you hang on where you are and find that another couple of hours go by, or leave and go home by an alternative, longer route only to later discover that you would have been on a train ten minutes later if only you'd waited?
A similar thing happened to me a few years back - trains were at a stand for an hour or so - fine - and then when they started to move three or four went through the station without stopping over the course of the next hour or more. We were on the platform thinking SURELY the next one will stop - but it didn't. In the end the driver of a train going in the other direction phoned through for us, and then a train did stop - aftyer we had been waiting two and a half hours. .
