Half true. Drivers are the past,present & future. Guards in this digital age are as ludicrous as the man in a top hat who walked in front of locos with a red flag in 1826. In 30 years our children will find a person who rang bells & got down at platforms as odd as the red flag man. Speedy sticks,& me in my very old age, can be aided by OBS,station staff & level platforms.
I honestly don't get what you find so ludicrous about having a second member of staff on a train who knows where it is, can help if the driver goes into shock following an incident, or gets injured, or taken ill, or can manage the onboard situation when passengers experience the same issues in the broadest terms while the driver gets on with driving, especially as my route knowledge is different to their own. The train doors are one part of a very large issue, and while I believe the guard should operate them, particularly on older stock which isn't fitted with all singing and dancing kit like ASDO where for the man trapped in the cab it seems like routine of opening and shutting 100 x in a shift seems to have gotten to be too much and someone has got dragged.
The whole point with this is that the OBS might not be there, at all, and sods law dictates that one time at least that they aren't there will be when they're required. We aren't talking just busy metropolitan areas here with loads of staff, depots etc and a station that's manned every mile or so here.
It'll be more rural areas like the Coastway where things like tractors and AHB crossings get into conflict.
I can never believe the Kings Lynn line was allowed to be DOO having seen what a 365 looks like at the front end when it crashes into heavy farm machinery - it's reckless. We all take our chances on the Lincs/Cambs lines and serious impacts with vehicles are a yearly occurrence.
Recently I was working a train which got stuck first out on the line and then set back to an unmanned rural station for nigh on 3 hours because a body was found. The BTP, MOM and the rest, the small number that are available in this rural area, were busy dealing with the body that was out on the line in an inaccessible area. It took them quite a long while just to get to the site. I spent hours looking after and trying to arrange alternative transport for passengers with medical conditions, children on their way home from school and people being aggressive because they were stuck. The driver ended up taking the train away ECS and I was on my own with these people, on an unmanned station, including children, with a broken help point, until they'd all been collected by a fleet of taxis.
An OBS could have done that, but as they aren't mandatory, they might not have been there. The driver couldn't go through the train offering use of his phone to those who didn't have one (a surprisingly large number in the area of smartphones owing to flat batteries), doing a passenger count to get replacement transport sourcing efforts on the go, and taking registers of the kids and those needing medication on board as priority cases. That's without things like my carrying people's luggage off the train and up the path to the pick up point.
Or the time I stepped on to the platform at an unmanned station to dispatch and noticed a bloke stood quietly. On approaching him it became apparent he was stood quietly in a large puddle of his own blood from a possible nicked artery. Guess who had to sort that out.
Or the time I was working on a mainline, had finished tickets and popped into the back cab and noticed a large chunk of a passing express was flying around smacking into things and throwing ballast everywhere. I was able to call the box, report our and it's location and which line it was on and have it stopped before it did any damage.
Or the time a full suitcase fell on a woman's head and dealt with the aftermath.
Or the time a colleague had their train hit a collapsed OHLE support post that smashed through the cab and nearly took the driver out.
Or the time a colleague had the stones to refuse to take a train due to poor riding that the driver hadn't noticed and it turned out that it was constantly bottoming out because crucial part of the bogie mounted equipment had been reassembled incorrectly.
We all have the stories but of course they're qualitative, so don't fit well into statistics, and thanks to our actions mostly come out as near misses or non incidents.
The second member of staff should be compulsory, should know where they are, and have the authority to stop or detain the train out of course if required. Otherwise they really are a waste of money.
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