CrossCountry Trains V Trainspotters: The Twitter Showdown

The_Train · 5 Jan 2020

If this is an issue for XC then it needs to be made a policy within their social media teams that they no longer provide information such as unit numbers. This then needs to be tweeted out and pinned to the top of their feed for all to see and any future queries of this nature can then be ignored.

No doubt, though, that when the person who posted the utter rubbish about it being a security issue went off shift, their replacement arrived and answered such queries off other people.

The reality is that whether anti-spotters like it or not, plenty of T/FOCs are absolutely willing to help pepple with these type of queries. I don't use Twitter these days as I found myself spending more and more time arguing with homophobic scum but when I did asked VTWC for a Pendo number that I'd forgotten to log and they responded within a matter of minutes whereas when I messaged Northern with a ticketing query relating to a cancelled train they responded around 6 hours too late......apologising for their late response. I also recall interacting with the XC feed after posting about a journey I was making with them and they had the time to do that even though I'd not specifically asked them anything

RailUK Forums

Edders23 · 5 Jan 2020

I cannot believe so much time and effort has been wasted discussing this

perhaps we should start another twitter campaign calling for the locking of this thread

so he didn't get the number boohoo there's always next time

The_Train · 5 Jan 2020

Edders23 said:
I cannot believe so much time and effort has been wasted discussing this

Oh the irony

hwl · 5 Jan 2020

theironroad said:
Really?

TOCs should be designing their livery and the font size of unit numbers to please the spotting community?

I'm not an number collecting enthusiast but surely part of the hobby is going to stations or sites and seeing the things and taking the lottery of what may turn up on the day.

Neither am I but the last XC train I was on had fault and I couldn't even see a vehicle number to report it (I had run to the next service as the XC one was late). If other operators can do it XC should be able to... (e.g. Southern encourage this type of fault reporting)

pdeaves · 5 Jan 2020

hwl said:
One simple solution to this for XC would be to put the numbers on the units in more visible places then no one would have to ask them on twitter...

theironroad said:
Really?
TOCs should be designing their livery and the font size of unit numbers to please the spotting community?

I think hwl may have exhibited sarcasm, as in 'put the numbers on the units in more visible places such as on the cab nose or cab sides or individual carriage numbers above the doors, etc.', like they already do (and spotters 'should' know).

hwl · 5 Jan 2020

pdeaves said:
I think hwl may have exhibited sarcasm, as in 'put the numbers on the units in more visible places such as on the cab nose or cab sides or individual carriage numbers above the doors, etc.', like they already do (and spotters 'should' know).

Except some XC Voyagers seem remarkably devoid of numbers (unit or vehicle) compared to others in the fleet.

Bantamzen · 5 Jan 2020

hwl said:
Neither am I but the last XC train I was on had fault and I couldn't even see a vehicle number to report it (I had run to the next service as the XC one was late). If other operators can do it XC should be able to... (e.g. Southern encourage this type of fault reporting)

You don't have to have the unit number to report a fault, just tell them the service and the fault and away you go. It can help if you have it of course, but it is not essential. However regardless of how a TOC's social media team operate, they are a customer service not a bespoke spotter one.

headshot119 · 5 Jan 2020

DarloRich said:
I saw this the other day. Total headloss from the spotter community. I am with xc. It isnt the job of thier passenger focused help channel to do a spotters job for them.

Didnt write the numbet in your little book? Then you didnt see it! Try another day.

I normally agree with what you put DarloRich but I beg to differ on this one.

I agree that TOC twitter accounts have better things to do than give out numbers, and they shouldn't be doing it. But hiding the issue behind "security" was a mistake.

hwl · 5 Jan 2020

Bantamzen said:
However regardless of how a TOC's social media team operate, they are a customer service not a bespoke spotter one.

Agreed.

You don't have to have the unit number to report a fault, just tell them the service and the fault and away you go. It can help if you have it of course, but it is not essential.

The busier TOCs tend to ask for unit /vehicle numbers when reporting faults, what surprised me in this case was that some of the same TOC's units of the same type were better visibly numbered

Darandio · 5 Jan 2020

headshot119 said:
I agree that TOC twitter accounts have better things to do than give out numbers, and they shouldn't be doing it. But hiding the issue behind "security" was a mistake.

They acknowledged this not long afterwards.

syorksdeano · 5 Jan 2020

Wasn't Reece that tweeted them was it? He seems to have a habit of tweeting requests like this

Dont call police

NoOnesFool · 5 Jan 2020

syorksdeano said:
Wasn't Reece that tweeted them was it? He seems to have a habit of tweeting requests like this

Dont call police

It was a Scottish man called Jack.

yorkie · 5 Jan 2020

TT-ONR-NRN said:
...Somehow in this case Great Western Railway turned on the defence against me saying that that was what they were here for. ...

People like us often have very different outlooks to spotters; chances are the social media person who replied to you was a spotter themselves.

headshot119 said:
I normally agree with what you put DarloRich but I beg to differ on this one.

I agree that TOC twitter accounts have better things to do than give out numbers, and they shouldn't be doing it. But hiding the issue behind "security" was a mistake.

Totally agree!

It's 100% legit to ask about the type of train or train length but there is no value in giving out unit numbers, but they ought to be honest that it's policy and not a security risk.

syorksdeano said:
Wasn't Reece that tweeted them was it? He seems to have a habit of tweeting requests like this

Dont call police

Not in this case.

However the individual you refer to has registered well over a hundred accounts on this forum, as well as on Twitter.

If you see a post on this forum that looks like it may be him please report it. See it, report it, sorted!

An insightful tweet by a member of this forum:
https://twitter.com/paul_winginit/status/1212777298962857984

@paul_winginit said:
Unless you’ve actually done this job (and I could give you the names of the few people who set up HUNDREDS of accounts to spam TOCs with these requests), you really don’t know the issues it causes.

And when we say "hundreds" of accounts from one person, we are not exaggerating.

Northern tried a limit of 1 request per person but multiple accounts would be generated to circumvent this.

https://twitter.com/northernassist/status/848446695599984640

Sorry Reece, our agreement is one unit number a day. Your friend will need to ask us tomorrow.

These people are so persistent, they put Talkie Toaster to shame.

(for anyone unable to view the video in the link, this depicts a talking toaster with AI in the fictional comedy Red Dwarf, which constantly pesters people asking if they want any toast or other toasted bread-related products and will not take 'no' for an answer)

ainsworth74 · 5 Jan 2020

yorkie said:
When we say "hundreds" of accounts from one person, we are not exaggerating.

Absolutely. Even on this Forum we have a long standing individual who must have gone through dozens of accounts all to ask about "gen" for units in and around Middlesbrough. The same individual probably has made hundreds of twitter accounts to bombard TOCs with the same requests. I've seen them tweet a TOC like SouthEastern with a question about which unit worked the 1207 from Middlesbrough to Saltburn. It is an issue and it does take up time dealing with it which distracts from the ability of us to do our job let alone someone running a twitter desk for a large TOC!

That being said I do think that it was a misstep for XC to use "security" as an excuse because it's so patently obvious that its an excuse. A bit like how blaming "'elf & safety gone mad" does a disservice to legitimate safety concerns it's just as bad blaming "security" on a non-issue which then leads people to not believe you when an actual security issue is raised.

The obvious solution is for XC to have simply said "sorry we're too busy right now to be able to give you that information" or to take the approach of other TOCs (I think Northern amongst them) that they'll give an account one piece of unit gen per day and that's it.

If they'd done either of the above two things we wouldn't be here right now. But instead they made something up and here we are...

221129 · 5 Jan 2020

hwl said:
One simple solution to this for XC would be to put the numbers on the units in more visible places then no one would have to ask them on twitter...

5 times per coach isnt enough then? The numbers on the side of the train arent there for spotters..

221129 · 5 Jan 2020

hwl said:
Except some XC Voyagers seem remarkably devoid of numbers (unit or vehicle) compared to others in the fleet.

Only if you're blind.

Aictos · 5 Jan 2020

221129 said:
Only if you're blind.

Visually Impaired please!

duffield · 5 Jan 2020

1/ Have a clear policy (no unit numbers at all, one per account per day, only if we're not busy, whatever the TOC thinks is appropriate)
2/ Make that policy visible including brief reasons (typically - we need to prioritise other enquiries, it's not an appropriate use of staff time etc.)
3/ Stick to it.
4/ If appropriate, link to non-TOC sources for this info with standard disclaimer

The policy, links etc. can all be hidden from the general public who are not interested, all you need on the twitter feed or website is something like this:
"Unit number enquiry? Click here for details."

Some people will ignore whatever policy you state, but at least you can just refer them to it, and some people will take heed and it will reduce the number of times you have to reply 'sorry we can't do that' or similar.

It's much better to expend a small one-off amount of effort on this than to be constantly having to go back and forward arguing the toss.

Darandio · 5 Jan 2020

duffield said:
1/ Have a clear policy (no unit numbers at all, one per account per day, only if we're not busy, whatever the TOC thinks is appropriate)
2/ Make that policy visible including brief reasons (typically - we need to prioritise other enquiries, it's not an appropriate use of staff time etc.)
3/ Stick to it

Some people will ignore whatever policy you state, but at least you can just refer them to it, and some people will take heed and it will reduce the number of times you have to reply 'sorry we can't do that'.

4/ Simply ignore such requests

Starmill · 5 Jan 2020

It is already very common for these sort of requests to go unanswered or to receive a short response along the lines of "Sorry, I'm afraid we can't help you with that."

It is up to the company to choose to respond to this sort of question or not.

DarloRich · 5 Jan 2020

headshot119 said:
I normally agree with what you put DarloRich but I beg to differ on this one.

I agree that TOC twitter accounts have better things to do than give out numbers, and they shouldn't be doing it. But hiding the issue behind "security" was a mistake.

Agreed and I said so in my follow up

DarloRich · 5 Jan 2020

The_Train said:
If this is an issue for XC then it needs to be made a policy within their social media teams that they no longer provide information such as unit numbers. This then needs to be tweeted out and pinned to the top of their feed for all to see and any future queries of this nature can then be ignored.

ignored.

No they dont!

The_Train said:
No doubt, though, that when the person who posted the utter rubbish about it being a security issue went off shift, their replacement arrived and answered such queries off other

Toc Twitter teams really shouldn't waste thier time with this banal rubbish. if it were my team I wouldn't let them. Every minute should be spent helping passengers.

221129 · 5 Jan 2020

For the record the social media team arent just dealing with Twitter etc. They are actually part of the control team so when the brown stuff hits the fan they put out the generic info and then get down to the more important stuff like keeping trains moving and informing the staff on the ground what's happening.

jh64 · 5 Jan 2020

yorkie said:
People like us often have very different outlooks to spotters; chances are the social media person who replied to you was a spotter themselves.

Totally agree!

It's 100% legit to ask about the type of train or train length but there is no value in giving out unit numbers, but they ought to be honest that it's policy and not a security risk.

Not in this case.

However the individual you refer to has registered well over a hundred accounts on this forum, as well as on Twitter.

If you see a post on this forum that looks like it may be him please report it. See it, report it, sorted!

An insightful tweet by a member of this forum:
https://twitter.com/paul_winginit/status/1212777298962857984

And when we say "hundreds" of accounts from one person, we are not exaggerating.

Northern tried a limit of 1 request per person but multiple accounts would be generated to circumvent this.

https://twitter.com/northernassist/status/848446695599984640

These people are so persistent, they put Talkie Toaster to shame.

(for anyone unable to view the video in the link, this depicts a talking toaster with AI in the fictional comedy Red Dwarf, which constantly pesters people asking if they want any toast or other toasted bread-related products and will not take 'no' for an answer)

Hah, you're really not kidding, just look for 'unit number hartlepool' on Twitter for running examples:

https://twitter.com/search?q=unit%20number%20hartlepool

JModulo · 5 Jan 2020

NoOnesFool said:
It was a Scottish man called Jack.

Said person was also complaining to XC demanding a refund on a £10 FC advance for no food being available..... at a weekend.

Energy · 5 Jan 2020

In my opinion the seat facing forwards or not is fine, some people feel ill when travelling backwards and some trains (like the 2x5 IETs) aren't easy to see which way the seat is, like if they have first class at both ends. But asking unit numbers is excessive, does it really matter? You may not have the number of the train you've been on but most trains (to excluding named units, special liveries and when trains are mid way through refurbishments/new livery) are identical in most ways.

JModulo said:
Said person was also complaining to XC demanding a refund on a £10 FC advance for no food being available..... at a weekend.

£10 is cheap for an XC ticket and no food at weekends is expected.

Darandio · 5 Jan 2020

jh64 said:
Hah, you're really not kidding, just look for 'unit number hartlepool' on Twitter for running examples:

https://twitter.com/search?q=unit%20number%20hartlepool

Said person also has an interest in @3270 on these forums. o_O

https://twitter.com/Friendforevery3/status/1206330645636698113

Link is basically a Tweet of the RailUK member page for the above user.

yorkie · 5 Jan 2020

jh64 said:
Hah, you're really not kidding, just look for 'unit number hartlepool' on Twitter for running examples:

https://twitter.com/search?q=unit%20number%20hartlepool

Yep that's all him alright!

duffield said:
1/ Have a clear policy (no unit numbers at all, one per account per day, ....

Did you see my earlier post? Reece creates hundreds of accounts on Twitter, hundreds of accounts on this forum, etc. That's just one person as an example.

It is difficult to state clearly just how big a problem this is.

We are lucky that 90% or more of the accounts created by this one individual on this forum are automatically detected by the forum software.

JModulo said:
Said person was also complaining to XC demanding a refund on a £10 FC advance for no food being available..... at a weekend.

If food is advertised as being available then at most you're talking about the difference between Standard and 1st ticket types; to request a full refund is absurd.

jamesst · 5 Jan 2020

The sheer aggression and disbelief I had from a spotter at a station once when I refused to phone control and find out a unit number for them did amuse me!! I'll carry on driving the train if you dont mind!!

snookertam · 5 Jan 2020

The alternative to them saying it is a 'Security issue' is to just say 'were not telling you because we don't have to' which would appear harsh and unfriendly, despite it being accurate. To be fair if I was XC I'd probably do similar.

CrossCountry Trains V Trainspotters: The Twitter Showdown

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