Went to get my local train to Darlington and it was cancelled.Apparently there are no conductors available.Sunday is voluntary and overtime only so here we all sit hoping management can rustle up a conductor for the next train.WTF.

Compulsory Sundays?! I’m going to speak to my union!!

#firstworldproblems

Seriously though our train service is a joke for the developed world which once had a great train service.

Use it or lose it was never so apt. Seems we have lost it.

The thing is it’s not as if it’s under funded or doesn’t have the demand. For the amount of pedestrian and freight usage that avail of the resources, it’s a terrible managed and budgeted service. Too many big directors at the top taking too much of a chunk.

I do like taking the piss out of train “drivers” in my local. Lets face it, its not like they actually steer the things.
And they get really (REALLY) angry when you query why a job that could be so easily automated pays so well.

Im reminded of the old Jasper Carrot joke that went along the lines of “remember when we just used to joke about British Rail sandwiches”

Britain’s rail system is absolute tosh, Im reminded of this everytime I catch a train somewhere else.

Thinking about my previous post, why are we even considering self driving cars when we don’t have self driving trains?

In fairness the rest of society is going the same way as the trains, just turns out they’re running early for once.

Why, in this day and age, does a train need a conductor?  Oh yes, I remember…the RMT and ASLEF claim it’s for safety….yet thousands of train journeys happen without them, quite safely

(Why are they called conductors?)

I always find that returning into the UK into any of our airports makes me think “we’re entering a third world country now”.

Massive queues because there’s no staff and the ones that are there have crap systems. Ceiling tiles missing or hanging down. Walking up what look like temporary staircases but which are, in fact, pretty much permanent.

Yes, these are first world problems, but these are the gateways into the country, and the first thing visitors see when they get here. But then, I suppose if 52% of the country don’t want any foreigners here, we are certainly going the right way about putting them off.

When I can get to Finland cheaper than I can get from Bristol to London then something is not right.

It’s not just the airports, came back from holiday via the Eurotunnel last night and it’s the same there.  The French side is clean and with good road surfaces, as soon as you get out of the train you hit a pothole-covered exit ramp then you see how disgusting the British road network is.

It really feels like we are no longer a first world country when you return.

Of course we are a first world country.
To be properly third world we would need a ruling elite who are totally distanced from and unaffected by the problems their decisions have for the people they govern.

When I can get to Finland cheaper than I can get from Bristol to London then something is not right.

You get the train to Finland?  That must take a long time.

It really feels like we are no longer a first world country when you return.

Take a look at the pay more tax thread and the fact that 90% are saying No gives you the answer.  People with money want to keep it but then moan that everything has gone to pot.

Interesting point.

Brighton held its Pride weekend (this weekend)

So What did the train companies do..

yip..

Cancelled all the trains for passengers back to London.. so they ran them empty.

And people slept on the beach.

Take a look at the pay more tax thread and the fact that 90% are saying No gives you the answer.  People with money want to keep it but then moan that everything has gone to pot.

Mmm no – people with money want to keep it rather than see it spent on giveaways to rich people and pointless vanity projects.  If it was spent on stuff like regenerating industry and providing an infrastructure, things might be different.

You get the train to Finland?  That must take a long time.

Very droll 😂

It really feels like we are no longer a first world country when you return.

It’s been a while since I went to a “third world” country that had worse airports and train services than the UK.

having recently been in Singapore and enjoyed the MRT system. the UK transport network is shite

Why, in this day and age, does a train need a conductor?

So disabled people can get on and off, for a start.

On the one occasion that the train home from work caught fire- properly- flames above carriage roof height- I was very glad there was a guard/conductor/call him what you will on board.

The conductor got all the passengers to somewhere safe and if he hadn’t been there, the ****ing old git with the huge trolley case (who could easily feature in the Daytime Arseholes thread) would have cheerfully blocked everyone else’s escape route just so he could try and take his bag with him even though it was obviously too big to fit down the aisle and too heavy for him to move easily.

but HS2 is making some tory donors very rich so that’s good

I was in a train crash a few years ago, the train hit a tractor at 90mph (40mph over what it should have been doing) with the obvious results.

The conductor was utterly useless, had no idea what to do and it was down to the passengers on the train to help everyone off. Plenty went wrong that day and my faith in humanity was restored by the actions of many people but the undertrained conductor wasn’t one of them.

It’s not just our railways.

Our assembly plants for nuclear warheads are also falling to bits.

I’m sort-of amused by the way this country is pulling its own face off and feeding it to the dog, until I remember I have to live here.

Why, in this day and age, does a train need a conductor?

So disabled people can get on and off, for a start.

I travel everyday day on driver-only trains and regularly see wheelchair-bound passengers going on via ramps put there by station staff….seems to work fine

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I do like taking the piss out of train “drivers” in my local. Lets face it, its not like they actually steer the things.
And they get really (REALLY) angry when you query why a job that could be so easily automated pays so well.

When something goes wrong on a train, you’ll be glad it wasn’t automated. Whether that be a fault or an accident or something passenger related.

As for driver only trains, in an accident the driver’s relatively likely to be incapacitated. And they’re no use when there’s a problem on board like abusive passengers or even something simple like people in the wrong seats.80% of all accidents involving the train/platform interface happened on driver-only trains even though they account for only 30% of services- and those incidents account for 50% of all fatalities and serious injuries on UK trains.

(that by itself isn’t so much an argument for guards; but it’s proof that there aren’t sufficient safeguards to make driver-only trains adequately safe. Extra platform resources or technological solutions could overcome this, but they don’t)

Why, in this day and age, does a train need a conductor?

If you get the one from glasgow to edinburgh on a weekend evening they have police officers nevermind conductors!

a problem on board like abusive passengers or even something simple like people in the wrong <span class=”skimlinks-unlinked”>seats</span>

I’m a regular train user. Trust me, the guards seem to have little will to intervene in most situations. On a crowded train from the south coast with a reserved seat that was occupied by someone who had just plucked the reserved note from the seat back I couldn’t even get the guard to come to the carriage, all he said was the train was very full and the guy would probably get off in a couple of stops.

I’ve often seen guards intervene. They certainly do so more often than no-guards as well as presumably discouraging people from doing it in the first place

I live in Bristol. I have a meeting in York on Tuesday. I looked at getting the train there and back rather than driving. £292! £292! And that’s probably on Cross Country as well, which is an absolute shower of a service.

It’s no wonder we all stick to our cars.

edit – for contrast, I can travel from Geneva to Bourg Saint Maurice (same journey time as Bristol to York) for £29.99.

You know it’s not working when train drivers get paid more than airline pilots.

I just booked a train for next Monday. £10.20 to get from Inverness to Strathcarron – with my bike. Bit of a billy bargain I thought,

I travel everyday day on driver-only trains and regularly see wheelchair-bound passengers going on via ramps put there by station staff….seems to work fine

Lots of unmanned  stations. The majority round here are.

Very droll

Not really.  You are comparing flying (which is a cheaper business to run) with rail

Lots of unmanned  stations. The majority round here are.

Yep, most where I am are too.  Although some do have an ticket seller in between 08:00 and 10:00.

I got the train to Glasgow last week.   Brand new rolling stock that cut 8 mins off the journey

The issue is tory market ideology meaning too many folk taking profits out

I can’t wait until we’re out of Europe, and Britain is Great Again, and all of these problems that the Europeans have given us (who wants French rolling stock? I DON’T IT’S FRENCH!) will be disappeared by the Brexit Fairies.

The issue is tory market ideology meaning too many folk taking profits out

Ah. Best we take what regulatory authority they are subject to away from them, then. That will fix everything.

When something goes wrong on a train, you’ll be glad it wasn’t automated

Flawed statement.

The <b>Docklands Light Railway</b> (<b>DLR</b>) is an automated light metro system opened in 1987.