This month, I celebrated my seventh anniversary on the railways. Seven years since I turned up at the local station for my first day. It’s been a blast. I love my job, as far as jobs go. If they stop paying me, I stop coming in. That might sound like common sense, but there’s plenty of folk who volunteer on heritage lines. I kid ye not, one of my colleagues recently retired from paid employment so that he can go do much the same job for free on a local steam line.
The railway is in a bit of a mess. It always has been, I suppose. A marvellous Victorian network that is showing its age. The franchising system in it’s current state hasn’t been fit for purpose for a long time. Pre-pandemic, there were just too many passengers and the service was creaking under the strain. Now, there are too few. Footfall is back to about 75-80% what it was. But that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Leisure travel is back to 100% of pre-pandemic levels, but little more than 50% of commuter journeys are being made. Those are the guys and gals who paid top dollar for their tickets.
Reform is on the cards. The government would like a revolution, chopping thousands of jobs and closing all the ticket offices. The unions are fighting to keep things just as they are. I think they’re all quite, quite mad and I am doing what I can to go with the flow as best I see it. Self preservation and all that. I even try to contribute towards the future success of the industry. Sometimes, I have good ideas. All of them are politely listened to. None will ever likely bear fruit. Some of them are very simple. We don’t provide free timetable booklets any more, and we’re short of the free plastic card wallets we give out. My revolutionary idea? Charge for them. Make a profit. It’s a win win type thing.
My best idea? I know what my specific job should change into. The idea of closing all ticket offices is preposterous. We’re years away from being able to do that. But there are quite a few smaller stations that, I will agree, do not warrant a permanent, static member of staff. And yet, they all need a regular presence. To maintain machines. To empty bins. To report faults. To help customers. To put down grit in winter. There is a business case for a Roving Ambassador, attending his or her patch of stations. It’s a good idea. But no one is listening. Probably.
The photo? From the fabulous Railway Museum in Tashkent, which is chock full of giant Soviet locos. Some of which you can clamber up and into.
The Mexile 