Great Western Coffee Shop

Thinking about the recent disruption to rail services by a little bit of snow, as posted on this board. Many refer to difficulties of staff getting to and from work, because of road conditions.

This reminded me of my astonishment to discover that many of the signalmen at Liverpool Street IECC drove to work because they no longer got free travel by rail to work.

Thinking back to the winter of 62/63 which was my first working for BR it was far worse than this has been so far. I don't recall that after the intial snow had been cleared members of staff had much difficulty getting to work.

Of course once at work there were many heroic deeds done to keep the trains moving. including 32 Nelsons on Hazelmere bank (3 trains 2*12, 1*8) and wrapping parrafin soaked rags round the injectors and setting fire to them to unfreeze them. Pus it proved that Merchants can steam of half house bricks when they had to use the coal stacks at Nine Elms and Feltham.

This was probaly for two reasons, firstly there were far more staff so absences could be covered, e.g. every shed had a spare link of drivers/firemen to cover and most stations probaly had at least 3 staff.

Secondly most lived near a station. or shed, think OOC village so could walk or even cycle to work. Plus once at their tation tehre were staff trains early the morning late at night. usually ECS workings and there were several staff pltforms such as at Dursford Road which these trains served.

Now we think nothing of travelling by car well over 10 miles either to our local station or work place and this applies to rail workers as well  others.

So our dependance on road transprot to get rail staff to work means that the railways cannot provide the allternative transport that they ought to be able to do very effectively in bad weather.

The other thing I'm surpised about is that we haven't heard about any shortages of diesel for trains because of the difficulties of getting road tankers to the refuelling points. Don't say they've reverted to rail tankers, that would be far too logical.

No replies!

Then it seems that either I've hit on an irrefutable truth that rail companies are too dependant on road transport or it's too stupid an idea and thus not worthy of comment.

The UK as a whole is (too) dependant on roads.

Look at school closures - it's because fewer school children live within walking distance of their school. And I don't just mean the growth in private schools. Look at the boy in Kent who had to travel from Sevenoaks to Dover (not sure whether these places ARE the ones, but the distance is about right) to get to a state school.

People don't shop locally anymore, they drive to Sainsbury's etc instead of popping round the corner.

So you're right in your post.

But when your local "Costcotter" sells overpriced tat, and Sainsburys is just round the corner in the car...!

However I do agree, good quality local shops should be better used. When I was younger every Saturday we went into town to buy our groceries etc, however i'm not even sure if the shop still exists!

The issue about schools isn't about the children. For primary schools they definitely live within walking distance. But the teachers don't, and that's why schools get closed.

Off topic but you reminded me of an incident from my childhood when some children were late because their parents' car had broken down and the teacher told them off for not living within walking distance of the school.  Trouble was they lived on a farm in the middle of the countryside probably four miles from the nearest school.

In fact I think school closures are more usually caused by the teachers being unable to get to school than the children.

More generally, I agree that rail companies and the UK generally is too reliant on road transport / the car.  Personally I use public transport to get to work and visit my consultancy clients, with the exception of towns miles from a railway station such as Devizes.

The Primary School I went to managed to stay open, in fact the Headteacher had a moan because not enough people made the effort to try and get to the school.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8454974.stm

I also would like to congratulate FGW for keeping (most) services running during the inclement weather. My only real gripe was at the lack of information provided online and by phone as to whether services were running on the SVB line. On two days I was given or read duff information about train running on said line. FGW posted, online, ammended timetables for the SVB line during the worst of the weather last week, only to then cancel all trains. I actually set off to to Shirehampton one day last week and called NRE to confirm that my train was running, (they said it was), only to discover on arrival at the station that nowt was running. Frustrating to say the least, particularly as I had checked all available information outlets for 'up to date' (!) info.

My neighbour, a retired teacher, was telling me that in the past if there was bad weather, if teachers couldn't get to their school they went to the nearest one to where they lived. This kept the schools open, in the main, and the kids had a bit of a change with more informal lessons and different faces.
I suppose Health & Safety has banned that for obscure reason.

No elf and safety but CRB checks alledegly. It is said, teachers are only "certified" for their own schools.

B****y hell - my comment WAS in jest !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!