Great Western Coffee Shop

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/img6041p.jpg)

Made I laff!

What a wholly innaccurate post! It's a turbostar, so a cloned Senior Conductor, not a Train Manager!  ;)

What does a Junior Conductor look like, then?  ;D

Would it not be courteous to at least link to his website?

im jelous why do we get vomitors

Mmm...could have done with some of these guys on Friday...Newcastle to Reading vomitor...announcement "we regret that there is no catering today, apologies, this is due to a staff shortage" jeez, how many hours?
Luckily I was only doing York to Donny...bit like BR days when trains ran from York to Bournemouth without a buffet because some bu++er hadn't turned up!

Those were the days - there was one thing you could always rely on to turn up...

the corners of the sandwiches.   ;D

Paul

Fair comment. I found the pic on another forum so it was already in the public domain. I reupload it to another hosting site so I could resize the original to better fit 'our' forum. Here's a link to forum and the topic concerned where the photo was originally posted:

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=30116

Thanks for putting a smile on my face, mumrar. And top use of a intervalometer!

Again, fair comment ;) The guy refers to himself as a guard....

Guard, Conductor (senior, junior, assistant, temporary etc etc), Train Manager, Ticket Examiner (assistant or otherwise)...... perhaps they're all there in the photo  :P ;D

Right, deep breath...here goes with an attempt at an explanation.

Back in the old days, trains had a guard, or sometimes two with a junior "front" guard and a more senior "rear" guard. Guards were responsible for operational matters, timekeeping, safety, train protection in the event of an emergency etc etc. Tickets were inspected/sold etc by ticket examiners or inspectors, with an inspector simply being a more senior staff member with more authority.

Move on several years and BR started combining the two roles and giving guards commercial responsibilities (examining and selling tickets) - at the point the old-fashioned term "conductor" (which had been used in the US for years) was brought back into use: initially as "conductor guard" but then with the guard bit dropped.

Later on BR re-named conductors operating Intercity trains as "senior conductors" because of the implied prestige of these trains compared to local ones. That why on FGW WEst local services the staff are still called conductors.

Post-privatization some intercity operators stuck with senior conductor (including FGW for several years), with others adopting "train manager", with Virgin being the first I think. Others (GNER) came up with the ridiculous "customer operations leader" and since some have reverted simply to "guard".

The rule book only deals with operational matters, not commercial ones, so all such staff (guards, conductors, senior conductors, train managers...) are referred to universally as guards in this context.

And lo! they were sore afraid. Here endeth the lesson.