Oxford station under British Rail - staff comment

[whole diary]

[grahame]

An autobiographical piece from Richard Vines at
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-01/restaurant-critic-goes-time-traveling-on-italy-s-quickest-train.html?

My father died when I was 18 and I decided to quit college (where I had just begun to train as a teacher) and return home. I needed a job, cold-called Oxford railway station and joined the staff of British Rail as a clerical officer in 1973.

I made 1,080 pounds ($1,790) a year answering travel queries. There were about eight of us covering multiple shifts and we couldn^t cope with the number of calls. People were left waiting on hold and sometimes tried repeatedly for days.

We took it in turns to be the train announcer, advising passengers on arrivals and departures we could not see from where we sat. I used to guess, based on the timetable and the sounds I heard, and sometimes guessed wrong.

Once, I advised passengers to board a freight train carrying coal that had stopped on a middle track, away from the platform. Another time, I misidentified a holiday special to Wales as a scheduled service to central England. Staff had to run up and down the train telling commuters to get off.

Carries on to talk of other railway jobs ...

[stebbo]

Once remember in the 1970s the platform indicator showing a northbound train as bound for Bradford Exchange when a train to Liverpool Lime Street was due. The announcer was reading off the stations to Bradford when he realised the mistake, stopped, exclaimed audibly over the PA^▸ (Public Address (broadcast loudspeaker announcements) or Passenger Assist (railway staff providing physical assistance to passengers with mobility issues), depending on context) "who the .... put that up" then recovered, amended the display and read out the correct calling pattern as if nothing had happened.

On another occasion a London bound train was late and the platform staff were struggling to get everybody on the train when the station master announced over the PA "will you get these b........s on the train and get it moving".

Ah, pure joy.