The Ticket Collector

Guards on East Midland Trains to strike.

Guards part of the RMT union on East Midlands Trains (Previously Midland Mainline) are to go on strike on the first 3 Saturdays in May.

After voting for both strike action and action short of strike, the senior conductors, will not book on for shifts that commence between a minute after midnight and 23:59 on May 3, 10 and 17.

The dispute centres on East Midlands Trains plan to use managers and other grades to guard trains on Sundays and to impose a new grade of senior conductor with inferior conditions, outside existing negotiated structures.

“What started as a simple and easily resolved dispute about Sunday working has been escalated by the company into a total breakdown in industrial relations,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

“Using managers and other grades to cover guards’ work amounts to an attack on their safety-critical role, and attempting to impose new conditions without negotiation has escalated matters and undermined our agreed negotiating machinery.

“Not only has the company slapped a ban on RMT reps doing normal union duties, but we now understand that it is planning to ship in managers from other companies to cover guards’ turns, and that also has serious safety implications and can only escalate matters even further.

“The only people competent to operate a safe service on Sundays or any other day of the week are the professional, trained conductors who do it day in, day out.

“The solution to this dispute remains simple, but it involves the company stepping back from the brink and engaging in talks about Sunday running rather than trying to impose,” Bob Crow said.

Tony Blair caught without a ticket, and then allowed to travel for free!

Former prime minister Tony Blair was left red-faced when he was caught travelling on a Heathrow Express train on Wednesday without a ticket and said he had no cash to pay the fare.

Blair, who has earned around 500,000 pounds being a speaker at various events since leaving office in June, was confronted by a ticket inspector as he travelled to Heathrow Airport to catch a flight to the United States on Monday.

He claimed he had no cash for the £24.50 pounds fare because money an aide had given him was no longer in his pocket.
Blairs bodyguard offered to pay the ticket, but the inspector said he could travel for free.

Blair’s spokesman was unavailable for comment.

New Rail Forum Launched.

A new rail forum for employees and enthusiasts working on and around the East Coast Mainline has recently been launched by our friends at Eastcoastchat.co.uk. Launched only in March the site has seen steady growth with a solid user base.

The forum has something for everyone whether you’re a steam enthusiast or working on a station platform. If your interested in anything to do with the East Coast Mainline we would strongly suggest you pay our friends at at Eastcoastchat.co.uk a visit.

Blind man refused travel on ScotRail

A blind man was refused travel on the ScotRail Caledonian Sleeper on Tuesday 15th April because his dog might have had fleas, germs or even mites.

Mark McClenaghan said: “Well, basically, I turned up at the station, on time for the train. My blind pass doesn’t allow me through the regular ticket barriers, and so I have to wait for assistance, I have to wait for somebody to physically open the barrier at the side.”

He continued: “By the time I got through, the train was rolling out. I was then aware that there was a sleeper train leaving for Edinburgh, well, for London. I asked if I could board it and they said, ‘No, no dogs allowed.” I said, well, my pass covers me and my dog’s a guide dog and they said absolutely no dogs allowed, through possible risk of the dog passing on fleas or germs or mites, which is just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, she’s a certified guide dog with the Health and Safety Executive.”

“They left me stranded in Aberdeen with no route to Edinburgh. I then spoke to a station manager who was just an idiot. He questioned my disability. He asked if I was genuinely blind. You can tell my eyes look normal but it’s behind my eyes that’s gone. The only option was rather than spend the night in what effectively was a building site at the front of the station, was to jump on a train to Perth which is still about 50 miles to Edinburgh. And I had to get in a taxi costing me 95 quid.”

The official (not for public reading) rules on Guide Dogs on the Caledonian sleeper is as follows

Guide Dogs travelling with a blind or deaf traveller are conveyed free of charge with NO CLEANING CHARGE APPLIED.

TheTicketCollector is wondering why this man was refused travel with his guide dog when it clearly states in the retail handbook that they are conveyed free of charge. TheTicketCollector is hoping that the members of staff who refused this man travel get a Form 1 disciplinary hearing and get retraining in disability awareness.

A spokeswoman for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association Emailed TheTicketCollector saying it was illegal to discriminate against guide dog owners. She said: “It is against the Disability Rights Act to refuse a guide dog access to any public place or public transport. Guide dogs and their owners should be treated the same way as any other user. All guide dogs are given a certificate of health and safety and do not pose any risk.”

We have emailed First Scotrail and a spokesman said: “We are investigating these claims and will respond direct in full to the customer. Our policy is to make services accessible to everyone, to provide all necessary assistance and to enable guide dog owners to travel safely.

“People with guide dogs are welcome on our services and they have Scotlandwide free travel at all times. There are clear guidelines in place and we expect these to be followed at all times.”

Another NXEC failure

At 1643 today a driver reported seeing water or smoke coming from the rear power car of an NXEC train (1635 Kings Cross to Leeds).

The train was stopped at the next station and safety checks were made, and the result of which was the driver of the 1635 service to Leeds stating he had dragging brakes on the rear.

This is yet another NXEC train failure messing up the East Coast mainline. Trains do fail, but if you had have kept the maintenance budget the same instead of making cut backs these failures wouldn’t keep happening.

So just what is “on time” when it comes to the Railway?

The term ‘on time’ normally means that a train arrives at the correct time publicised in a timetable - correct?
No, not on the railway its not.

When it comes to punctually - the figures which the Railway Companies print huge A1 posters and show off and say “hey look at us we have 98% punctually, blah blah” and which also determines your season ticket discount . You’d expect that when they say they have 98% that 98% of trains arrived at the destination at the timetabled time.
Wrong! The trains only have to arrive within 5 minutes of the timetabled time.

So the train arrives 5 minutes late and it is still on time! Even better is that long distance ‘intercity’ services have an extra 5 minutes allowance. So now the train can be up to 10 minutes and be still on time!

Now what the Railway Companies are getting wise to is that they can add extra minutes into the timetable here and there as ‘recovery time’. So if they are regularly failing the 10 minutes time the can always add extra minutes into the working timetable to compensate. Now what the Train Company would say is this ‘recovery time’ is to compensate for engineering works and speed restrictions.

When it comes to compensation for the trains running late, you have to be delayed by 30 minutes before you even get to start to get compensation. But what with the extra minutes being added here and there just how late is it in real terms?

NXEC - Communication Skills Lacking

As there is not much else to talk about this week, its time for another review of NXEC and their excuse of a Train Company!

It seems that NXEC have finally discovered the seat reservation printer!! Hooray! However they are still failing at putting the seat reservations out on the late night services from Kings Cross and also the last service out of Edinburgh.
The seat reservations which are put out at Peterborough on the 07:20 have been put out for the last two weeks! That’s a record, however what’s the odds that when the printer decides to pack it in again that they wont be put out again for months on end.

Another area which NXEC always fails on is communication. Whenever the trains are late, you never get any information at all, the staff have not got a foggiest and couldn’t give a rats backside about you the customer. They may pretend they care and put out scripted announcements on the public annoyance system, but that’s just it. The announcements are scripts.

Our friends over at NXEC Commuter have also been noticing the lack of communication from National Express to their customer facing staff. To quote them..

“Clearly NXEC HO still have serious problems communicating with customer facing staff. The thing is if they can’t communicate changes and/or the reasons behind them to staff, what chance have customers got of obtaining up to date and accurate information?”.

The “technical problems” with the trolley in standard seems to have been fixed as that excuse has not been used for a while to explain the absence of the trolley with rip off priced sandwiches.